Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process for Establishing Customer Relationship Complexity

Abstract

Financial services entities and other service organizations have a large number of customer relationships of varying scope and complexity. Customer service managers (CSMs) at the financial services entity are each tasked with managing a set of customer relationships and providing service to the set of customers. Traditionally, the allocation of customers to CSMs has been done using a subjective approach (i.e., CSM 1 seems capable of managing the customer relationship with Customer X or dividing the number of customers by the number of CSMs) without regard to the specific needs and complex nature of either the incoming customer relationship or the CSM’s current customer relationships. In this paper, we describe the application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) Optimization Technique in the area of Customer Relationship Capacity model. We tried to define the relationship complexity Score associated with the customer based upon financial plan attributes and personality characteristics. The method described herein also provides the advantage of dynamically evaluating and adjusting the current workload for a CSM to ensure an appropriate level of relationship complexity is assigned to each CSM and also to identify top performers for incoming customer service relationships.