Do they really understand "Churn"?

Interesting article on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, "Call for wireless regulation gets louder." This has been a long time coming. In 2000 there were 100 million wireless customers and 31 million changed carriers that year. All the industry talk focused on decreasing this churn.

And the churn rates have improved. Better networks, better phones, better equipment all around has reduced the amount of churn. Along with the general impression that all carriers are just not that good. Why switch from the devil you know to the one you don't?

The problems arise from the same challenge AT&T faced when deregulated. Customer Service. It stunk. And for the wireless companies, it still does. The carriers are great until you have a problem. Then they are terrible. You become their enemy.

And being an election year we're bound to have the politicians step in to solve the problem. The complaints are that frequent and loud that our representatives think this will help them with re-election. Wow. That's really bad.

But there isn't a law that can solve this. Until the wireless companies realize that customer loyalty and profitability have a strong relationship, that successful, growing companies actually care about their customers, they will have lousy service.

It's a dramatic failure of marketing and it leaves the carriers in a terribly vulnerable market position.

The first carrier that realizes the critical importance of building and maintaining strong customer relationships will dominate the market.