Chapter 5. Churn Detection

You have become familiar with some of the business applications of Hadoop presented in this book, such as fraud detection, 360-degree customer analytics, and increasing the response rate for campaigns. In this chapter, we will cover a common application of Hadoop known as churn detection. Churn refers to a customer leaving a subscription with company X to sign up for a subscription with company Y. The causes of churn can be manifold, such as company Y offering cheaper services or making a more attractive offer to the customer. Churn could also be an indicator of inferior services delivered by company X, leading to a dissatisfied customer who decides to move to company Y. No company in the world likes to see their customers leaving, but this problem is very acute in the mobile telephony business where the services offered by mobile service providers are not differentiated much, and the hurdle of switching over to another provider can be overcome with...