Factors Leading to Mobile Telecommunications Customer Churn in Zambia

Abstract

Customer churn is a major challenge in the mobile telecommunications industry today. Churn can be caused by different factors, which may arise from the interactions of subscribers with products and services or even employees of organizations. If customer churn is not managed and prevented in good time, it can lead to significant loss of revenues and possibly make a business crumble. This paper studies the various reasons that lead to mobile customer churn in the Zambian telecommunication sector. Seven hundred mobile subscribers in six districts of Zambia were interviewed. The mobile subscribers who churned once or more between the years 2010 to 2015 indicated the actual factors that led them to terminate subscription to mobile services. There were a total of 20 factors identified to cause churn in the Zambian mobile telecommunication industry. Results show that poor customer service took the lead by causing about 23% of the mobile customer churn cases that took place between the years 2010 to 2015. Poor network quality and high cost of services followed as causes of 18% and 14% of the churn cases for those years respectively.