Churn prediction and management system
First Claim
1. A system for managing churn among customers of a business having a statistically large customer base, the system comprising:
- a data mart;
a population architecture adapted to receiving customer data from one or more data sources, the customer data defining a plurality of customer attributes for each customer in the customer base;
a data manipulation module for preparing one or more analytical records from data stored in the data mart for data mining;
a data mining tool for analyzing the one or more analytical records prepared by the data manipulation module, the data mining tool adapted to return results identifying clusters of customers sharing common customer attributes and calculating individual customers'"'"' propensities to churn during a predefined period in the future, the data manipulation module storing the results in the data mart; and
an end user access module for accessing the results returned from the data mining tool and presenting the results to a user.
3 Assignments
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for managing churn among the customers of a business is provided. The system and method provide for an analysis of the causes of customer churn and identifies customers who are most likely to churn in the future. Identifying likely churners allows appropriate steps to be taken to prevent customers who are likely to churn from actually churning. The system included a dedicated data mart, a population architecture, a data manipulation module, a data mining tool and an end user access module for accessing results and preparing preconfigured reports. The method includes adopting an appropriate definition of churn, analyzing historical customer to identify significant trends and variables, preparing data for data mining, training a prediction model, verifying the results, deploying the model, defining retention targets, and identifying the most responsive targets.
308 Citations
38 Claims
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1. A system for managing churn among customers of a business having a statistically large customer base, the system comprising:
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a data mart;
a population architecture adapted to receiving customer data from one or more data sources, the customer data defining a plurality of customer attributes for each customer in the customer base;
a data manipulation module for preparing one or more analytical records from data stored in the data mart for data mining;
a data mining tool for analyzing the one or more analytical records prepared by the data manipulation module, the data mining tool adapted to return results identifying clusters of customers sharing common customer attributes and calculating individual customers'"'"' propensities to churn during a predefined period in the future, the data manipulation module storing the results in the data mart; and
an end user access module for accessing the results returned from the data mining tool and presenting the results to a user. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A method of designing an efficient customer retention program for managing customer churn among customers of a business having a statistically large customer base, the customer retention program including an analysis of the causes of customer churn and identifying customers who are most likely to churn in the future, so that appropriate steps may be taken to prevent customers who are likely to churn in the future from churning, the method comprising:
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adopting a definition of churn sufficient to encompass all customers in the customer base and which relies on objective factors to determine whether individual customers have churned or remain active;
analyzing historical customer data to identify significant trends and variables that provide insight into causes of churn and to identify classes of customers who are more likely to churn than others;
preparing customer data, including data corresponding to the identified trends and variables, for data mining and predictive modeling;
training at least one predictive model on historical customer data;
verifying the accuracy of the at least one predictive model based on historical data;
deploying the at least one trained model on current customer data to generate a propensity to churn score for individual customers indicating the relative likelihood that the individual customer will churn within a specified time period in the future;
defining characteristics of the target customers to be contacted during the course of the customer retention program; and
compiling a list of targeted customers having the defined characteristics. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27)
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28. A method of identifying targets for a customer retention program, the method comprising:
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identifying a set of customer data variables from which a customer'"'"'s propensity to churn during a future period may be estimated based on values of the identified customer data variables associated with the customer;
providing a data mining tool with predictive modeling capabilities, the tool supporting at least one predictive model for estimating the propensity of individual customers to churn during the future period;
training the at least one predictive model on historical customer data for which churn results are known such that the at least one predictive model may be refined based on a comparison of the estimated churn propensities of individual customers against actual churn results;
deploying the trained model on current data to estimate churn propensities of individual customers for the period;
selecting targets for the customer retention program based on said churn propensities. - View Dependent Claims (29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38)
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Specification