This week I’d like to give some insight into the projects I’ve been working on at Gigwell. I have been given two major data projects for the summer. The goal is to utilize their subscription data, booking data, and platform usage data to make recommendations on how to reduce customer churn and increase revenue through their online payment portal. To clarify, Gigwell wants all their booking agents to charge their buyers through our online payment portal because we charge an additional fee to use it. They have the option to charge the buyers via cash, check or online.

When I first started, I was really excited to apply the skills I’ve developed through the analytics certificate to these projects. However, as the weeks have progressed I have come across a few challenges with the data. I have not been able to develop a very useful model to predict churn and monetization. The model I’ve developed helps but it isn’t what I was hoping for. In my courses, the datasets we have worked with have had a lot more useful variables and because of this the models have been more predictive and insightful. This has been frustrating but it has been a great learning experience. In practice, the data is not going to be as clean and comprehensive and the results are not going to come as easy.

With that being said, I’ve been able to utilize others resources such as excel pivot tables to better identify trends and I’ve found a lot of useful information that can be acted upon. The next part for me is finalizing the strategy and making sure that what I recommend can be done. This is a challenge because it requires additional time and man power to improve churn and monetization. There is such a small team that they need to prioritize daily operations over anything else. I need my strategy to be small enough to handle but smart enough to be impactful. I feel good about my ideas so far and I’m excited to hear their feedback as I make my presentations in the coming weeks.

Josh