Use SPSS to predict customer churn.ipynb

Kernel: Python 3

Use SPSS to predict customer churn with ibm-watsonx-ai

This notebook contains steps to deploy sample SPSS stream, and start scoring new data.

Some familiarity with bash is helpful. This notebook uses Python 3.11.

You will use a data set, Telco Customer Churn, which details anonymous customer data from a telecommunication company. Use the details of this data set to predict customer churn which is very critical to business as it's easier to retain existing customers rather than acquiring new ones.

Learning goals

The learning goals of this notebook are:

• Working with the watsonx.ai Runtime instance

• Online deployment of SPSS model

• Scoring data using deployed model

Contents

This notebook contains the following parts:

1. Setup

2. Model upload

3. Web service creation

4. Scoring

5. Clean up

6. Summary and next steps

1. Set up the environment

Before you use the sample code in this notebook, you must perform the following setup tasks:

• Create a watsonx.ai Runtime Service instance (a free plan is offered and information about how to create the instance can be found here).

Install and import the ibm-watsonx-ai and dependecies

Note: ibm-watsonx-ai documentation can be found here.

!pip install wget
!pip install -U ibm-watsonx-ai | tail -n 1

Connection to watsonx.ai Runtime

Authenticate the watsonx.ai Runtime service on IBM Cloud. You need to provide platform api_key and instance location.

You can use IBM Cloud CLI to retrieve platform API Key and instance location.

API Key can be generated in the following way:

ibmcloud login
ibmcloud iam api-key-create API_KEY_NAME

In result, get the value of api_key from the output.

Location of your watsonx.ai Runtime instance can be retrieved in the following way:

ibmcloud login --apikey API_KEY -a https://cloud.ibm.com
ibmcloud resource service-instance INSTANCE_NAME

In result, get the value of location from the output.

Tip: Your Cloud API key can be generated by going to the Users section of the Cloud console. From that page, click your name, scroll down to the API Keys section, and click Create an IBM Cloud API key. Give your key a name and click Create, then copy the created key and paste it below. You can also get a service specific url by going to the Endpoint URLs section of the watsonx.ai Runtime docs. You can check your instance location in your watsonx.ai Runtime Service instance details.

You can also get service specific apikey by going to the Service IDs section of the Cloud Console. From that page, click Create, then copy the created key and paste it below.

Action: Enter your api_key and location in the following cell.

api_key = 'PASTE YOUR PLATFORM API KEY HERE'
location = 'PASTE YOUR INSTANCE LOCATION HERE'

from ibm_watsonx_ai import Credentials

credentials = Credentials(
    api_key=api_key,
    url='https://' + location + '.ml.cloud.ibm.com'
)

from ibm_watsonx_ai import APIClient

client = APIClient(credentials)

Working with spaces

First, create a space that will be used for your work. If you do not have space already created, you can use Deployment Spaces Dashboard to create one.

• Click New Deployment Space

• Create an empty space

• Select Cloud Object Storage

• Select watsonx.ai Runtime instance and press Create

• Copy space_id and paste it below

Tip: You can also use SDK to prepare the space for your work. More information can be found here.

Action: Assign space ID below

space_id = 'PASTE YOUR SPACE ID HERE'

You can use list method to print all existing spaces.

client.spaces.list(limit=10)

To be able to interact with all resources available in watsonx.ai Runtime, you need to set space which you will be using.

client.set.default_space(space_id)

'SUCCESS'

2. Upload model

In this section you will learn how to upload the model to the Cloud.

Action: Download sample SPSS model from git project using wget.

import os
from wget import download

sample_dir = 'spss_sample_model'
if not os.path.isdir(sample_dir):
    os.mkdir(sample_dir)

filename=os.path.join(sample_dir, 'customer-satisfaction-prediction.str')
if not os.path.isfile(filename):
    filename = download('https://github.com/IBM/watson-machine-learning-samples/raw/master/cloud/models/spss/customer_satisfaction/model/customer-satisfaction-prediction.str',\
                             out=sample_dir)
print(filename)

spss_sample_model/customer-satisfaction-prediction.str

Store SPSS sample model in your watsonx.ai Runtime instance.

client.software_specifications.list()

sw_spec_id = client.software_specifications.get_id_by_name("spss-modeler_18.2")

model_meta_props = {
    client.repository.ModelMetaNames.NAME: "SPSS customer satisfaction model",
    client.repository.ModelMetaNames.TYPE: "spss-modeler_18.2",
    client.repository.ModelMetaNames.SOFTWARE_SPEC_ID: sw_spec_id
}

model_details = client.repository.store_model(filename, model_meta_props)

Note: You can see that model is successfully stored in watsonx.ai Runtime Service.

client.repository.list_models()

3. Create online deployment

You can use commands bellow to create online deployment for stored model (web service).

model_id = client.repository.get_model_id(model_details)

deployment = client.deployments.create(
    artifact_id=model_id,
    meta_props={
        client.deployments.ConfigurationMetaNames.NAME: "SPSS deployment",
        client.deployments.ConfigurationMetaNames.ONLINE:{}}
)

#######################################################################################

Synchronous deployment creation for uid: 'c2219084-0a3a-48fc-9afb-663b566fcb58' started

#######################################################################################


initializing.....
ready


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Successfully finished deployment creation, deployment_uid='c600e46d-eb55-4b2d-be81-09a79aa428a3'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Scoring

You can send new scoring records to web-service deployment using score method.

deployment_id = client.deployments.get_id(deployment)

scoring_data = {
    client.deployments.ScoringMetaNames.INPUT_DATA: [{
        "fields": ["customerID","gender","SeniorCitizen","Partner","Dependents","tenure","PhoneService","MultipleLines","InternetService","OnlineSecurity","OnlineBackup","DeviceProtection","TechSupport","StreamingTV","StreamingMovies","Contract","PaperlessBilling","PaymentMethod","MonthlyCharges","TotalCharges","Churn","SampleWeight"],
        "values":[["3638-WEABW","Female",0,"Yes","No",58,"Yes","Yes","DSL","No","Yes","No","Yes","No","No","Two year","Yes","Credit card (automatic)",59.9,3505.1,"No",2.768]]
    }]
}

predictions = client.deployments.score(deployment_id, scoring_data)
print(predictions)

{'predictions': [{'fields': ['customerID', 'Churn', 'Predicted Churn', 'Probability of Churn'], 'values': [['3638-WEABW', 'No', 'No', 0.0526309571556145]]}]}

As we can see this sample telco customer is satisfied ("Predicted Churn", "No").

5. Clean up

If you want to clean up all created assets:

• experiments

• trainings

• pipelines

• model definitions

• models

• functions

• deployments

see the steps in this sample notebook.

6. Summary and next steps

You successfully completed this notebook! You learned how to use watsonx.ai Runtime for SPSS model deployment and scoring. Check out our Online Documentation for more samples, tutorials, documentation, how-tos, and blog posts.

Author

Lukasz Cmielowski, PhD, is an Automation Architect and Data Scientist at IBM with a track record of developing enterprise-level applications that substantially increases clients' ability to turn data into actionable knowledge.

Mateusz Szewczyk, Software Engineer at watsonx.ai

Copyright © 2020-2025 IBM. This notebook and its source code are released under the terms of the MIT License.