Customer Service Standard Setting - Essay Example

There have been many issues regarding the pipelines and other accessories that are used to transfer water throughout the city. The problem concerned is that the customer service centers have not been adequate enough to effectively fulfill the requirements of the general public. For this reason I am just not targeting any company instead I will target upon the entire water industry and propose a method that would enable them to make up better decisions using CBA(Cost Benefit Analysis) and the customer preference theory.

An important and decisive factor that defines the end of a pipeline's functional life is the customer service standards that are in place. If customers are reluctant to accept any disturbances in water supply then the functional life of the pipeline is much shorter than that for a pipeline whose customers are ready to accept interruptions coupled with failures and the following repair of these failures. This methodology was based upon the procedure of Choice Modeling. Even as still a non-market technique, this technique is considered the state of the art in this area, and is a noteworthy improvement on approaches such as dependent valuation that are subject to context effects that is misrepresentation due to the way in which the questions are asked.

Through the use of choice modeling and by questioning a statistically convincing number of customers and dealing with different subsets of this number with delicately varied choices, it is feasible to quantify customers' willingness to pay for various attributes. By classifying attributes valued by customers and their readiness to pay for them, the benefits side of the equation is complete. On the other side of this equation, of course, are costs. Also there is a need to develop an understanding of the social costs associated with water service provision.

These comprise the cost of traffic disruption due to pipeline, repairs, failures or replacement (like road blocks occur when such construction or renovation takes place), and the loss to business just because of water service disturbances. These costs can be considerable depending on the conditions and should not be overlooked. Amusingly, these social costs amount high at both very rigid standards and very liberal ones, as social costs are accounted when pipes are often replaced to achieve the higher standard.

In this methodology we need to consequently examine through various survey questions and focus groups about the attributes of disturbances of which the customers are most concerned. The questionnaire may include the SSI questions, and various other questions highlighting the attributes of water service. The detail of the results can be reported in the technical report. For the purposes of this report, the following can be stated as the method would show how the respondents coped up with the interruptions; the involved person generally could cope with short disturbances, and the components of such nuisances that are deemed to be important are:Time length of the interruption; Whether they are notified of the interruptions;What day the interruptions happened at what time andFinally, the number of interruptions per year This methodology should undergo identification of the interrupti