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IBM Business Analytics Improves Customer Retention at XO Communications

By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributor

IBM announced that XO Communications (News - Alert), a provider of advanced broadband communications services and solutions, has leveraged IBM Business Analytics software to reduce customer churn rates.

The IBM (News - Alert) predictive analytics software has helped XO Communications reduce customer churn rates by nearly 50 percent. It has helped the company save millions of dollars by offering deeper insights into customer behaviors and spotting trends. The solution helps the company identify those likely to defect, so it can take proactive actions to keep their most valuable customers.

“IBM business analytics software has been the difference maker to our organization, allowing us to exceed our initial goals by improving retention rates, and creating millions of dollars in annualized revenue protection,” said Cris Payne, senior manager of customer intelligence at XO Communications, in a statement.

“With a better overall customer experience, XO is now able to stay competitive against other carriers and improve our overall satisfaction,” Payne added. “Our IBM business analytics portfolio allows us to quickly produce edible customer information leading to more strategic decisions affecting our top and bottom lines.”

Customer churn needs to be addressed aggressively because it is more profitable to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. It is therefore important to identify customers who are at the highest risk of churn before they switch to another service provider.

IBM predictive analytics software enabled XO Communications to achieve significant improvement in customer retention and revenue protection with better quality customer interactions in contact centers and through more effective marketing campaigns. The software enabled XO to quickly build and analyze customer data and share the information across the organization.

IBM SPSS predictive analytics analyzes and scores customer data, while an IBM Netezza (News - Alert) analytic appliance speeds data delivery and facilitates the creation of faster predictive models. Another solution, IBM Cognos business intelligence software allows everyone across XO to better share, consume and collaborate with the data more effectively.

IBM predictive analytics allows organizations to prioritize their proactive outbound calls to “high risk” customers and better organize their resources. Now, each client services manager can monitor churn risk on up to 400 accounts. This helps in developing a better understanding of the entire customer experience.

“IBM's business analytics software allows communications service providers to leverage all available customer data to quickly and accurately increase customer retention, acquire more profitable customers and create better interactions at every touch point,” said Deepak Advani, vice president of predictive analytics at IBM.

“XO is a terrific example of an organization who has unleashed the power of predictive analytics to positively impact their business processes and significantly drive ROI,” Advani added.

Recently, IBM announced that geospatial technology and spatial data types from Esri will be integrated into the IBM Netezza analytics appliances. This will give federal agencies and customers in industries such as energy, retail, telecommunications, and health care the capability to query and geospatially analyze enormous datasets at very fast speeds.