pRNN: A Recurrent Neural Network based Approach for Customer Churn Prediction in Telecommunication Sector

Predicting customer churn has become the priority of every telecommunication service provider as the market is becoming more saturated and competitive. This paper presents a comparison of neural network learning algorithms for customer churn prediction. The data set used to train and test the neural network algorithms was provided by one of the leading telecommunication company in Malaysia. The Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) networks are trained using nine (9) types of learning algorithms, which are Levenberg Marquardt backpropagation (trainlm), BFGS Quasi-Newton backpropagation (trainbfg), Conjugate Gradient backpropagation with Fletcher-Reeves Updates (traincgf), Conjugate Gradient backpropagation with Polak-Ribiere Updates (traincgp), Conjugate Gradient backpropagation with Powell-Beale Restarts (traincgb), Scaled Conjugate Gradient backpropagation (trainscg), One Step Secant backpropagation (trainoss), Bayesian Regularization backpropagation (trainbr), and Resilient backpropagation (trainrp). The performance of the Neural Network is measured based on the prediction accuracy of the learning and testing phases. LM learning algorithm is found to be the optimum model of a neural network model consisting of fourteen input units, one hidden node and one output node. The best result of the experiment indicated that this model is able to produce the performance accuracy of 94.82%.

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Customer Churn Prediction for Imbalanced Class Distribution of Data in Business Sector

Journal of Advanced College of Engineering and Management ◽

10.3126/jacem.v5i0.26693 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 101-110

Author(s):

Aayush Bhattarai ◽

Elisha Shrestha ◽

Ram Prasad Sapkota

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Imbalanced Data ◽

Telecommunications Industry ◽

Business Case ◽

Machine Learning Algorithms ◽

Business Sector ◽

Churn Prediction ◽

Telecommunication Sector ◽

Customer Churn ◽

Customer Churn Prediction

Churners are those people who are about to transfer their business to a competitor or simply who cancel a subscription to a service. This paper is based on a specific business sector, which is telecommunication sector. With a churn rate of 30%, the telecommunication sector takes the first place on the list. In this paper, we present some advanced data mining methodologies which predicts customer churn in the pre-paid mobile telecommunications industry using a call detail records dataset. To implement the predictive models, we initially propose and then apply four machine learning algorithms: Random Forest, Naïve Bayes, Logistic Regression, and XG Boost. To evaluate the models, we use various evaluation metrics and find the best model which will be suitable for any class imbalanced data and also our business case. This paper can also be viewed as a comparative study on the most popular machine learning methods applied to the challenging problem of customer churn prediction.

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