Entel PCS leads the way

Chilean telco boosts customer loyalty with SAS®

With SAS customer relationship management (CRM), Entel PCS explores historical data and predicts future client behavior, allowing the mobile telecommunications company to obtain the lowest churn rate in the industry.

Transparent and very competitive, the telecommunications industry in Chile is the most advanced in Latin America. The country's mobile phone sector, in particular, has witnessed soaring growth rates since subscribership more than doubled from 2 to 5 million between 1999 and 2001.

As mobile phone penetration rates surpassed fixed-line use during that time, mobile service provider Entel PCS quickly earned its place as a leader in Chile's telecommunications industry.

While Entel PCS continues to lead the relatively mature market with 40 percent of the more than 7 million mobile phone users in Chile, the competition keeps growing.

Among the many factors that have made Entel PCS a leader is its decision to invest – since the beginning – in SAS solutions. With SAS Customer Retention for Telecommunications, companies gain better control of one of their most critical business variables – the churn rate. Today, Entel PCS has the lowest churn rate in Chile's local mobile market, and its rate is among the best even by international standards.

"When we began searching for a data mining tool that could explore historic data and predict the future behavior of our customers, we quickly chose SAS CRM since it's a world-class solution," says Enzo Lepori, customer service manager for Entel PCS.

With the SAS solution, the company combines customized analyses with prebuilt models that help speed implementation. Plus, the flexible and scalable technology from SAS is guaranteed to keep up with the levels of growth anticipated in the Chilean mobile phone market – a 12 to 15 percent growth rate over the next year alone.

Targeted campaigns make Entel PCS the operator with the lowest churn
The churn models used at Entel PCS analyze historic client data to help executives make decisions about the company's service offerings and to implement effective marketing campaigns that bolster the loyalty of the company's best customers.

The industry-specific SAS solution has already shown significant returns. In fact, the already low churn rates at Entel PCS diminished even more with SAS.

"The SAS solution contributes to our success in reaching annual goals for churn reduction," says Lepori. "And SAS is the kind of tool with a rapidly recovered investment, since it positively impacts one of the more critical variables of the business." These two accomplishments have enabled Entel PCS to become the strongest competitor in the industry.

Future plans: benefit models
Currently, Entel PCS segments customers into four categories: individual prepaid customers, individual subscribers, corporate subscribers and small-business subscribers. But the company is studying a broader use of SAS applications, including solutions that would enhance its segmentation strategy. These tools would help Entel PCS create product offers, product communications and bundled services targeted to meet specific customer needs.

Lepori says SAS has already helped improve results, and there's still potential left to exploit. "Now that we can design our retention campaigns differently for customers, with varying churn and value probabilities, we can better designate the appropriate resources to retain customers. That's CRM."

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