ish relationships with customers. With a market full of new providers, there is only one way for the provider to get on the consumer's radar screen and that is through advertising and marketing. Sales Just as the role of advertising has changed with the adjustment to the consumer's shopping cycle, SO too has the sales function. In the old days of monopoly business, sales was a process of sitting and waiting for consumers to come and ask for services. In today's competitive market, the sales process involves an often proactive and aggressive approach towards consumers with a variety of methods. Included in the category of sales are the many innovative ways that telephone services are being brought to the consumer, such as the extensive field of promotions and promotional activity, the recruitment of partners from the retail, Internet and services businesses, and the use of agents and direct sales forces. Customer Service A discussion of customer relationship management would not be complete without the inclusion of the customer service function. This department provides a critical link in the ongoing support of customer relationships. As we have already noted, the quality of a customer's customer service experience plays a large role in overall satisfaction and subsequent likelihood to churn. Billing We also need to include the role of billing and billing systems and their ongoing support. Although billing may have shifted in its eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook importance, as competition becomes more prevalent, it is still the heart and soul of the telecommunications business. Aligning Missions and Functions So, the missions dictate what we want to accomplish and the functions dictate how to execute the missions. The next step is to see how well we can map the missions to the functions. The retail model provides us with an almost textbook explanation of how the telco advertising and sales functions work. Figure 17-5 also shows that the customer service and billing organizations, key to cu