Report prepared for Nikos Tsantanis of INTRACOM S.A. TELECOM SOLUTIONS. No unauthorised sharing.

November 2012 | www.tmforum.org

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Customer
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Assuring service quality for every customer
Sponsored by:
 Report prepared for Nikos Tsantanis of INTRACOM S.A. TELECOM SOLUTIONS. No unauthorised sharing.
Sponsored feature
From Churn Prediction to Churn Prevention
Blending Big Data with Complex Event Processing in Real-Time to Improve Customer Loyalty
Nikos Tsantanis, Telco Software Marketing, Intracom Telecom
Joe, a long-time subscriber of Mobile
Operator CareNetCom*, was watching TV
when he noticed the latest commercial of
highly promising operator FastNetCom.
They had recently upgraded their network
coverage and were claiming much faster
data speeds under all circumstances.
Joe recalled that two of his best friends
had recently switched to FastNetCom
and both were telling him that they were
very excited. The day after, Joe was
commuting from his home to the office
by train, when he decided to get current
with the news through his smartphone.
While heading for his favorite news site
he found that the access speed was very
slow. He then looked around to realize
that so many other passengers had
exactly the same idea to use their mobile
devices for quick surf on the internet
before getting to work. The situation
became worse when Joe tried to watch a
short video with the top news headlines.
The video was hard to load, had a lot of
lag and was buffering forever.
“That’s enough”, thought Joe about
his mobile provider. “If accessing
the Internet on the go has to be an
adventure, I am over with CareNetCom.
I will do as my friends did and switch to
FastNetCom. I am so frustrated that once
I get to the office I will announce my
decision to change operator to my closest
colleagues.”
Joe had hardly finished making these
bitter thoughts when his smartphone
notified him of the arrival of a new SMS.
Joe looked at the screen and read: “Dear
Joe, we understand that a slow network
connection affected your ability to browse
the Internet satisfactorily. We apologize
for the inconvenience and are working to
upgrade our network the soonest possible.
Meanwhile, we would like to express our
appreciation to you by offering you an
38 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
extra 1 GB of free data volume that you
can consume by the end of this month.
Thank you for trusting CareNetCom.”
Joe could hardly believe his eyes. It
was the first time he had experienced
such a treatment from a telecom operator
as a way to apologize for poor service
quality. More importantly, the operator’s
reaction was impressively fast and too
attractive to ignore. A few minutes ago
Joe was ready to churn. Now he is a
happy advocate of CareNetCom. Later
on in his office, he had no hesitation in
describing his remarkable experience to
his colleagues and recommending his
beloved operator CareNetCom.
Caring for the ‘Segment of one’
The story of Joe may possibly raise
questions about how easily such an
extraordinary service claim can be
realized by an operator. For example,
how to identify in (near) real-time all
subscribers who, like Joe, are about
to churn? Most importantly, how to
ensure that all corrective actions are
being decided and implemented fast
enough to ensure that the customer’s
decision to quit is abandoned before it is
implemented?
Estimating the probability of a customer
switching to another service provider is a
thoroughly researched problem that has
given rise to elaborate, multi-parametric
churn prediction algorithms with varying
degree of accuracy. The same holds true
for determining the corrective action that
is suitable in each context. However, no
matter which methodology one chooses,
predicting churn for a single customer
and determining appropriate actions at a
later stage is noteworthy yet insufficient.
Ideally, the operator should be in a position
to break all their customers down into
‘segments of one’ and apply, in real-time,
a personalized, unique treatment to each
segment, including a possible marketing
campaign. In conceptual terms, such churn
prediction and prevention approach can be
expressed in two phases, as follows.
n Phase 1: Generate subscriber
intelligence (churn prediction).
Scale-up the algorithm of choice for
churn prediction to the entire customer
base and continuously monitor the churn
probability of every single subscriber.
This involves the unceasing execution of
calculations for each of the millions of an
operator’s subscribers, an effort which
is computationally quite intensive.
n Phase 2: Act upon intelligence (churn
prevention). Proactively determine and
launch the ‘next best action’ which, in
principle, is different per subscriber,
in order to prevent the churn that was
predicted in step one. Timely execution
of the appropriate action should
maximize customer retention probability.
Churn Prevention with BigStreamer™
Intracom Telecom has addressed this
dual Customer Experience challenge by
coupling two cutting-edge technologies,
Big Data and Complex Event Processing
under a single solution, namely
BigStreamer. Let’s briefly delve into
this particular use case and sketch out
how BigStreamer can help an operator
both identify the subscribers that are
‘suspicious’ to churn and take preventive
actions to avoid churn – fast. In simplified
terms, the following are about to occur:
1. Integrate with multiple Data
Sources. First of all, every user
interaction with the operator’s
network, including Joe’s attempts to
access content on his smartphone,
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 Report prepared for Nikos Tsantanis of INTRACOM S.A. TELECOM SOLUTIONS. No unauthorised sharing.
generates a series of data and events.
BigStreamer’s Hadoop-powered Telco
Adapters Repository enables capturing
in real-time streaming data from any
information source, irrespective of
origin, including the operator’s network
elements and OSS/BSS infrastructure.
2. Make Data Usable. BigStreamer’s
Telco oriented Data & Business
Events Object Model maps the
incoming raw data into TM Forum’s
SID standard model, giving to it a well-
defined interpretation.
3. Calculate Metrics. The arrival of each
new event or piece of data serves as
trigger for the ongoing recalculation of
a wide range of numerical quantities
(KPIs, KQIs, etc.) that are predefined in a
telco-oriented Business & Operational
Metrics Repository. The calculation of
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Churn Risk is one of these metrics.
4. Trigger Actions. Finally, BigStreamer’s
Event Stream Processor correlates
the incoming data and calculated
metrics against the rules that have
been supplied into the system by the
operator’s marketing team. Whenever
the conditions set in the rules
become true, other software tools &
applications, like campaign managers,
are being triggered to realize the
intended business logic.
Iterating the sequence of steps 1 to 4 in
real-time for a large number of subscribers
(typically millions) and calculating for each
of them the metrics of Step 3 (possibly
hundreds) as well as triggering the most
relevant corrective action of Step 4 is
a demanding Big Data task requiring
ample computing capacity. BigStreamer’s
Hadoop-powered architecture ensures a
massively parallel processing platform able
to cope, end-to-end, with such an intense
computational challenge.
Surviving and thriving in a fast-
changing business environment requires
that operators embrace radically new
approaches as part of their way of doing
business. Going from Churn Prediction to
Churn Prevention is just one use case, out
of numerous others, that can be realized
by combining Big Data and Complex
Event Processing technologies under the
BigStreamer solution.
Learn more about BigStreamer at
www.intracom-telecom.com/BigStreamer
*CareNetCom and FastNetCom are fictitious names
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 39