Social Network Analysis in Telecommunications

CHAPTER 8

Evaluating the Business Results

Chapter 5 described the telecommunications environment, presenting the business issues that most telecommunications companies are facing. A distinguishing factor of a good customer-relationship program is the way a company understands its customers, not just in their demographic attributes or in usage, but also in terms of their relationships with one another. The way the customers relate to one another can reveal quite relevant information about them.

Chapter 6 presented the methodology to calculate the customer-influence factor according to a particular business event, specifically with regard to churn and bundle diffusion. That chapter dealt with how to create an influence factor, taking into consideration the customer relationships within the network.

Chapter 7 presented the code to analyze the network outcomes, showing how to calculate the influence factor based on behavior over four months and the cascade events based on the next six months.

In contrast to Chapters 6 and 7, which dealt with technical approaches, Chapter 8 returns to the business approach, presenting the business results in terms of the social network analysis model. This chapter explores how this model effectively improves business processes in terms of bundle diffusion and decreases the impact of churn over time.

CORRELATION BETWEEN CUSTOMER INFLUENCE AND PAST EVENTS OF CHURN

The most important information gained from analytical models is its relevance to business ...