 exactly is it that you want to manage? Do you want to trick the customer into staying with you and pay you more than the competition is asking? Is that what you mean by churn management? (That's not likely to last very long.) Or do you want to figure out which customers are likely to leave and adjust their prices SO that they are more likely to stay? Again, is this a simple matter of keeping the customer from leaving, or is it really a question of understanding what they can get from competitors and negotiating a new deal with them based on our willingness to make the adjustment? Chapter 8 Managing Technology-Based Churn What about situations where customers want to change to a carrier that has newer or better technology? Do you want to convince them that using the old stuff is better? Is that churn management? Are we really unable or unwilling to provide this customer with a technology upgrade for their service? Are we offering them old technology or nothing, or is this simply an opportunity for us to upgrade our customers to a new generation of technology? In all of the situations we have mentioned, and in every single churn case that you can think of, the churn problem is never as simple as preventing customers from leaving. Churn is a Symptom When you peel away the confusing layers of rhetoric that surround the churn issue, what you find in every single case is that churn is only a symptom. The real problem is always that your organization is unable to make an appropriate assessment of the churn situation. Optimum churn solutions are not developed with unfounded guesswork or brilliant marketing campaigns. Remember that whatever you do in the marketplace, your competition can see and mimic. Whatever kind of offer you make to your customers, your competition can do the same. No hammering away at the churn problem with the old tried-and-true marketing techniques will yield any kind of sustainable competitive advantage. I f you want to win at the game of churn management, your only option is to take on and solve