Mining telecommunication networks to enhance customer lifetime predictions

Customer retention has become a necessity in many markets, including mobile telecommunications. As it becomes easier for customers to switch providers, the providers seek to improve prediction models in an effort to intervene with potential churners. Many studies have evaluated different models seeking any improvement to prediction accuracy. This study proposes that the attributes, not the model, need to be reconsidered. By representing call detail records as a social network of customers, network attributes can be extracted for use in various traditional prediction models. The use of network attributes exhibits a significant increase in the area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) when compared to using just individual customer attributes.