Correspondence: Sadia Jahanzeb, Fatima Jinnah Women University, The Mall, Old Presidency, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. e-mail: idea_73_50@hotmail.com

¹teaches at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi. Her practical experience in the field includes a five years stint at the State Bank of Pakistan, as an Officer-Grade II. She has an MBA degree from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi and a diploma in banking from the Institute of Bankers (IBP) in Pakistan. Her areas of interest are banking, finance and management.

²is a student of MBA at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi.

Received 11 January 2007; Revised 11 January 2007.

Abstract

Churn management is a perennial issue in the telecom industry of Pakistan. The two telecommunication service providers selected for this study are Telenor and Ufone. The aim of the research is to provide an insight into the rapidly emerging issue of churn in the telecom sector of Pakistan, describe the relevant aspects of churn management strategies and gauge their effectiveness in customer retention. Purposive sampling has been adopted such that 100 subscribers, with 50, each of Ufone and Telenor, constitute the sample. The sample profile comprises of 100 male post-paid subscribers, of age range 30–45 years, employed in the middle management level of the corporate sector and users of either Telenor or Ufone. The survey method has been adopted, and a comparison has been drawn between the churn rates of the two service providers through the application of T-test. Analysis reveals that subscribers' dissatisfaction with any dimension of price, voice quality and network coverage are the main reasons for customer churn at both Ufone and Telenor. Ufone has, however, adopted comparatively better churn management strategies than Telenor to retain its customers.