Service Improvement Example

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Any service that your company offers can be improved by using Value Analysis and Problems and Solutions Analysis.

Value analysis of a service:

1. gives insight into whether the costs to provide the service are matched to what your customer wants

2. gives a new perspective to improve your service in ways that directly relate to what
your customer wants

3. allows creativity to be applied to improve areas that the customer cares about most

Steps for Value Analysis

1. Describe the service as it exists today.

   
  • enter descriptive information and link any related documents or pictures to the services record in Refocus(pop up window)Pictures and documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Diagrams, etc. can be liked to the product for easy viewing and editing.

2. Enter the costs that go into providing the service.

3. List the ‘Value Elements’ or ‘Benefits’ that the service provides to the
customer.

    (pop up window) The ‘Value Elements’ or ‘Functions’ are what the service does for the customer.

(Function screen list showing only list of functions for modem 28.8)

4. Survey the customers of the product so they can rank the ‘Value Elements’
in importance to them.

    The ‘Value Elements’ are ranked by the customers to show which ones are most important to them in terms of the ‘Value’ they receive from them.

This screen shows a simple ranking from most important (1) to least important ( ).to the customer.

(function list screen showing functions and customer rank)

5. Allocate costs to the value elements.

    Next, we go back to the service cost list and use the ‘cost allocater’ to determine how much each ‘Value Element’ costs to provide. We go through the cost list and ‘allocate’ a percent of each cost out to the ‘Value Elements’ that the service provides. The result is a list showing how much it costs to provide each ‘Value Element’ or ‘Benefit’ to the customer

(pop up window) This screen shows the ‘Value Elements’ that the service provides, and how much of the service cost goes to each ‘Value Element’.

(Value Element list with the costs only, from modem 28.8)

6. Identify cost - value element mismatches.

    Now we can compare how much it costs to provide each ‘Value Element’ to how much value the customer says they receive from each ‘Value Element’ that the service provides them.

We can identify ‘Value Elements’ that exhibit ‘value cost mismatches’.

  • High cost to provide and low value to the customer
  • Low cost to provide but high value to the customer
  • The highest cost ‘Value Elements’ usually have unnecessary costs that can be reduced

(pop up window) Comparing the cost of ‘Value Elements’ to the ‘Value Ranking’ from the customer shows us where to target improvement in the service.

(function list showing cost and customer ranking. Add graphic that points out the high cost, low value function, the low value, high cost function and the two top cost functions.)

7. Identify costs to reduce and determine implementation

    Now we know which value elements should be changed because their cost does not match the value the customer believes they get from them. We can easily track back to the product costs to identify which costs should be reduced. We can also investigate new ways to provide the targeted ‘Value Elements’ that will meet customer needs better while often costing less.
  • Brainstorm solutions for each target ‘Value Element’
  • Describe and rank the solutions
  • Choose best solutions to implement
  • Implement solutions

(pop up window) The following screen shows a ranked list of ‘solutions’ for a targeted ‘Value Element’.

Problems and Solutions analysis can be used interchangeably and in combination with Value Analysis during improvement projects.

The Virtual Guide on line help and tutorial system walks you through this process in much more detail and has several examples and tutorials.
 

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