Santo Dewatmoko; Nadia Rizky Vindiazhari; Zaenal Muttaqien
This study examines customer churn prediction in subscription-based telecommunications from a digital marketing perspective using machine learning. The analysis utilizes a secondary dataset of 7,043 customer records that simulate behavioral, contractual, and financial attributes commonly found in telecom services. Three classification algorithms Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting are applied to model churn behavior. Data preprocessing includes handling missing values, encoding categorical variables, and splitting data into training and testing sets. Model performance is evaluated using accuracy, recall, and ROC-AUC, with emphasis on recall due to its importance in identifying at-risk customers. The results show that Gradient Boosting achieves the highest overall performance with an ROC-AUC of 0.84, while Logistic Regression provides relatively higher recall. Key drivers of churn include short-term contracts, higher monthly charges, and lower service engagement. However, recall remains moderate, indicating limitations in capturing complex behavioral factors. These findings suggest the need to combine predictive models with behavioral insights and highlight the importance of early customer engagement and long-term retention strategies.