An approach to prioritize customer-based, cost-effective service enhancements

Service firms routinely enhance their offerings to satisfy and retain current customers and to attract new customers. We show theoretically that service improvements can be prioritized by simultaneously taking into account the likely incremental revenue (through increased customer value) and the incremental cost of making the improvement. The customer values obtained from a sample of respondents, and cost estimates obtained from managers of the service providing organization are combined to prioritize improvements using a 'bang for the buck' (i.e. value/cost) rule. Such a prioritization would be helpful to come up with a 'short list' of service improvements. The items on the short list can be evaluated in detail for their 'Return on Quality'. The approach for prioritization is illustrated in the context of improving passenger train service between a pair of cities in India. An adaptive self-explicated approach is used for obtaining customer values and cost estimates. The customer values so elicited display substantial cross-validity.