
Friends' influence helps telecom firms retain customers
Retaining customers is a central concern in many industries, including IT markets, where churn rates—the rate at which subscribers to a service discontinue their subscriptions—are high. A new study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University tested a strategy to help a telecommunications firm manage churn. Contacting not only customers but also their friends helped reduce the customers’ propensity to discontinue their ties to the company.