drooooidddd

[Peter Korsten]

Andy Tarpinian schreef:

> On Nov 6, 2009, at 1:14 AM, Peter Korsten <peter at severity-one.com>  
> wrote:
> 
>> While technically quite possible: no, they'll never do that.
> 
> Which in reality makes no sense, wouldn't they rather continue to have  
> my money every month vs. me paying $80 or so bucks to terminate my  
> contract?

Well, no. If you move your primary number to a different provider, it's 
clear that you're going to 'churn', meaning, you're going leave. Even 
though you would pay them for a bit longer, you'd let the contract 
expire, or not use the phone nearly as much, or both.

There is somebody at AT&T Wireless who has a KPI (key performance 
indicator) and therefore his wage based on churn, so they make it as 
unattractive as possible for you to leave. Offering superior customer 
experience is another way to keep churn down, but well, if AT&T did 
that, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

See, telecom providers think long term, and acquisition of new customers 
is a lot more expensive than retention of existing customers. So they 
want to keep you as a customer, and they want your ARPU (average revenue 
per user) to go up, so they make more money.

This sounds all very capitalistic and stuff, but hey, mobile operators 
have to eat, too, and in general are committed to give a good experience 
to their customers.

- Peter