Telecommunications Customers Churn Monitoring using Flow Maps and Cartogram Visualization

Telecommunication companies compete in increasingly aggr essive markets. Avoiding customer defection, or churn, should be at the core of successful management in such conte xt. These companies store and manage abundant customer usage data. Their analysis using advance d techniques can be a source of valuable insight into customers’ behavior over time. Exploratory data visua lization can help in this task. Many important contributions to multivariate data visualization using no nlinear techniques have recently been made. In this paper, we analyze a database of customer landline telephone usage in Brazil. These data are first visualized using a nonlinear manifold learning model, Generative Topo graphic Mapping (GTM). This visualization is enhanced using a cartogram technique, inspired in geograph ical representation methods, that reintroduces the local nonlinear distortion into the representation space. Y t another geographical information visualization technique, namely the Flow Maps, is then used to visualize cu stomer migrations over time periods in the GTM data representation space. The experimental results sh own in this paper provide evidence to support that the use of these methods can assist experts in the process of u eful knowledge extraction, with an impact on customer retention management strategies.