Modeling Customer Lifetimes with Multiple Causes of Churn

Customer retention and customer churn are key metrics of interest to marketers, but little attention has been placed on linking the different reasons for which customers churn to their value to a contractual service provider. In this paper, we put forth a hierarchical competing-risk model to jointly model when customers choose to terminate their service and why. Some of these reasons for churn can be influenced by the firm (e.g., service problems or price–value trade-offs), but others are uncontrollable (e.g., customer relocation and death). Using this framework, we demonstrate that the impact of a firm's efforts to reduce customer churn for controllable reasons is mitigated by the prevalence of uncontrollable ones, resulting in a “damper effect” on the return from a firm's retention marketing efforts. We use data from a provider of land-based telecommunication services to demonstrate how the competing-risk model can be used to derive a measure of the incremental customer value that a firm can expect to accrue through its efforts to delay churn, taking this damper effect into account. In addition to varying across customers based on geodemographic information, the magnitude of the damper effect depends on a customer's tenure to date. We discuss how our framework can be used to tailor the firm's retention strategy to individual customers, both in terms of which customers to target and when retention efforts should be deployed

Sensing distress – towards a blended method for detecting and responding to problematic customer experience events

Excellent Customer Experience (CE) is a strategic priority for many large service organisations in a competitive marketplace. CE should be seamless, and in most cases it is, with customers ordering, paying for and receiving services that align with their expectations. However, in rare cases, an exceptional process event leads to service delivery delay or failure, and both the customer and organ-isation end up in complex recovery situations as a result. Unless this recovery is handled effectively inefficiency, avoidable costs and brand damage can result. So how can organisations sense when these problems are occurring and how can they respond to avoid these negative consequences? Our paper proposes a blended methodology where process mining and qualitative user research com-bine to give a holistic picture of customer experience issues, derived from a par-ticular customer case study. We propose a theoretical model for detecting and responding to customer issues, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of such a model when applied in practice in large service organisations

Study on Chinese Tourism Web Sites' Distribution and Online Marketing Effects.

As a platform and carrier of tourism information, tourism websites (TWs) and online tourism marketing have deeply affected the tourism industry. The authors adopt a geographical perspective to analyze the distribution of Chinese tourism websites (CTWs), and statistical analysis with SPSS16.0 was conducted to explore the online marketing effects of CTWs, and some meaningful results has been produced: 1) The number of CTWs generally decreases from eastern China to central and western China, and are especially dominant in tourism developed provinces. 2) The number of tourists has strong statistical correlation with the number of CTWs. 3) The strongest correlation for inbound tourists is with hotel websites, and the highest correlation coefficient is 0.807 between the number of domestic tourist and resort websites. Both inbound and domestic tourists have a low correlation coefficient with travel agency websites (TA). 4) There exist some statistical models between tourist numbers and different kinds of CTWs. The results clearly unveil the marketing effects and correlation of CTWs and is helpful for further online marketing strategies

Strong negative self regulation of Prokaryotic transcription factors increases the intrinsic noise of protein expression

Background Many prokaryotic transcription factors repress their own transcription. It is often asserted that such regulation enables a cell to homeostatically maintain protein abundance. We explore the role of negative self regulation of transcription in regulating the variability of protein abundance using a variety of stochastic modeling techniques. Results We undertake a novel analysis of a classic model for negative self regulation. We demonstrate that, with standard approximations, protein variance relative to its mean should be independent of repressor strength in a physiological range. Consequently, in that range, the coefficient of variation would increase with repressor strength. However, stochastic computer simulations demonstrate that there is a greater increase in noise associated with strong repressors than predicted by theory. The discrepancies between the mathematical analysis and computer simulations arise because with strong repressors the approximation that leads to Michaelis-Menten-like hyperbolic repression terms ceases to be valid. Because we observe that strong negative feedback increases variability and so is unlikely to be a mechanism for noise control, we suggest instead that negative feedback is evolutionarily favoured because it allows the cell to minimize mRNA usage. To test this, we used in silico evolution to demonstrate that while negative feedback can achieve only a modest improvement in protein noise reduction compared with the unregulated system, it can achieve good improvement in protein response times and very substantial improvement in reducing mRNA levels. Conclusions Strong negative self regulation of transcription may not always be a mechanism for homeostatic control of protein abundance, but instead might be evolutionarily favoured as a mechanism to limit the use of mRNA. The use of hyperbolic terms derived from quasi-steady-state approximation should also be avoided in the analysis of stochastic models with strong repressors

UK experience of liver transplantation for erythropoietic protoporphyria

Erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP) is characterised by excess production of free protoporphyrin from the bone marrow, most commonly due to deficiency of the enzyme ferrochelatase. Excess protoporphyrin gives rise to the cutaneous photosensitivity characteristic of the disease, and in a minority of patients leads to end-stage liver disease necessitating liver transplantation (LT). There is limited information regarding the timing, impact and long-term outcome of LT in such patients, thus we aimed to identify the indications and outcomes of all transplants performed for EPP in the UK using data from the UK Transplant Registry. Between 1987 and 2009, five patients underwent LT for EPP liver disease. Median follow-up was 60 months, and there were two deaths at 44 and 95 months from causes unrelated to liver disease. The remaining recipients are alive at 22.4 years, 61 months and 55 months after transplant. A high rate of postoperative biliary stricturing requiring multiple biliary interventions was observed. Recurrent EPP-liver disease occurred in 4/5 (80%) of patients but graft failure has not been observed. Given the role of biliary obstruction in inducing EPP-mediated liver damage, we suggest that consideration should be given for construction of a Roux loop at the time of transplant. Thus we demonstrate that although EPP liver transplant recipients have a good long-term survival, comparable to patients undergoing LT for other indications, biliary complications and disease recurrence are almost universal, and bone marrow transplantation should be considered where possible

The relationship between perceived service quality and patient willingness to recommend at a national oncology hospital network

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>"Willingness to recommend" questions are being increasingly used to measure and manage patient loyalty. Yet, there is little data in the literature correlating the "willingness to recommend" question with commonly used perceived service quality items in surveys to identify the key drivers of the optimal patient experience. We therefore evaluated the relationship between perceived service quality and subsequent single top box "willingness to recommend" scores among oncology patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 2018 returning cancer patients treated at Cancer Treatment Centers of America^®(CTCA) responded to an internally developed service quality questionnaire, which covered the following dimensions: operations and services, treatment and care with a multidisciplinary team and patient endorsements. Items were measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from "completely dissatisfied" to "completely satisfied." Patient willingness to, "recommend this facility to friends and associates" was measured on an 11-point scale ranging from "not at all likely" to "extremely likely", which was subsequently dichotomized into two categories: top box response (10) versus all others (0-9). The relationship between perceived service quality and "willingness to recommend" was assessed via Kendall's tau b correlation and univariate and multivariate logistic regression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the 2018 patients, 959 were newly diagnosed while 1059 were previously treated. 902 were males and 1116 females. The mean age was 54.2 years and the most frequent diagnoses were breast (412), lung (294), prostate (260), colorectal (179) and pancreas (169). 1553 patients said they were "extremely likely" to recommend CTCA to friends and associates, resulting in 77% "top box" responses while 465 (23%) responded in all other categories. The key service quality drivers that were statistically significant in the final logistic model were "team helping you understand your medical condition", "staff genuinely caring for you as an individual", "whole person approach to patient care" and "CTCA medical oncologist."</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In this multi-center study, we demonstrate the predictive significance of perceived service quality as it relates to patient willingness to recommend an oncology service provider. This study is unique in reporting on the role of perceived service quality as a predictor of patient willingness to recommend in a large sample of cancer patients.</p