Patent ID: 8301488

Claim:
A method for determining the effectiveness of a plurality of customer satisfaction improvement techniques, the method comprising: determining, by a value computation component implemented using at least one processing device, at least one incremental satisfaction improvement value associated with increasing customer satisfaction of at least one customer by a fixed increment on a satisfaction scale based on at least one of increased benefit value and decreased detriment value by categories of customer satisfaction in accordance with detriments/benefits data and customer data, wherein determining the at least one incremental satisfaction improvement value comprises: apportioning, by a detriments computation component implemented using the at least one processing device, at least some detriments from the detriments/benefits data according to groups of customers for a plurality of satisfaction levels per the customer data to provide a plurality of apportioned detriments; apportioning, by a benefits computation component implemented using the at least one processing device, at least some benefits from the detriments/benefits data according to the groups of customers to provide a plurality of apportioned benefits; for each of the plurality of satisfaction levels, calculating, by a weighted average component implemented using the at least one processing device and operatively connected to the detriments computation component and the benefits computation component, a satisfaction value based on a summation of corresponding ones of the plurality of apportioned detriments and the plurality of apportioned benefits to provide a plurality of satisfaction values; for successive pairs of increasing satisfaction levels, calculating, by the weighted average component, a difference between ones of the plurality of satisfaction values to provide a plurality of difference values; and calculating, by the weighted average component, a weighted average of the plurality of difference values to provide the at least one incremental satisfaction improvement value; and determining, by a techniques evaluation component implemented using the at least one processing device and operatively coupled to the value computation component, decision support data corresponding to the plurality of customer satisfaction improvement techniques based at least in part upon the incremental satisfaction improvement value.