nths and complained about service twice. Customer service is likely to consider Jane a bad customer, a complainer who is high maintenance. When we talk to the advertising people about Jane, a completely different picture emerges. Jane, they say, is a middle-aged successful businessperson, owns two cars, and is mother of three. Jane fits precisely the demographic profile that they have been trying to appeal to. According to the advertising department, Jane is the best kind of customer that we can have. Going on to the billing organization, yet another picture of Jane emerges. Jane's phone bills are quite erratic. She uses hundreds of minutes one month and few minutes the next. Her average phone bill, at $25 per month, is well below the average revenue for a customer. From their perspective, Jane is a marginal customer. Each of these different perspectives about Jane, taken in isolation, can be considered to be an accurate appraisal of Jane as a customer. However, none of them truly describe her well, and each of them will treat Jane differently, some better, some worse, according to their particular perception. Different perception, different treatment. Jane feels that the customer service person is rude and the sales person nice. Ultimately, her appraisal of how she is being treated will be the sum total of all of the different messages. eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook Problem No. 1: Creating a Single View of the Customer The first problem we have to deal with, then, is to create a single view of the customer. Different Functions: Different Objectives Getting everyone to see the same customer in the same way will certainly contribute much to your ability to manage churn well. However, gaining this single view will not do the job by itself. There is a second problem to face that is ameliorating the different objectives set for each organization. In fact, part of the reason that the various organizational units view customers differently is because of their different objectives. Lets consi