APPLICATION OF IMPROVED CFI MODEL ON ATTRIBUTES OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Alemu Moges Belay, University of Vaasa, Finland albel@uwasa.fi Josu Takala, University of Vaasa, Finland jot@uwasa.fi ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to develop and apply improved model of Critical Factor Index (CCFI) on customer satisfaction in one of service provider in Finland. CCFI method is selected because it is comprehensive, practical, and considers the standard deviation and sees also the gap between the customer expectation and experiences. After the description of the method the current pitfalls of the model will be explained by comparing the existing CFI to the newly developed CCFI (corrected critical factor index). From the result of the study, the company identified the area to be improved based on the criticality of the attributes and give insight to balance the resource allocations accordingly. The methodology is Questionnaire/survey with relevant attributes and 150 responses are gathered with required information (15 are analyzed in this paper). The main motive of the paper is that, the old model doesn’t consider the influence of number of responses whereas the new model takes in to consideration and bring some non-zero results. This helps managers to see the relative gap when one of the standard deviation (experience and/or expectation) becomes zero. Besides to that this paper introduces how control chart could help on identifying green, yellow, and red section based on the criticality of the attributes. Finally emphasized implementation index and its correlation will be presented. Keywords: Corrected Critical Factor Index; CCFI, Customer satisfaction; Control chart, Service. INTRODUCTION No matter the type of services/products you are providing, decision making is done at any stage in the process. So, strategic service management of an organisation ought to have a sagacious view about the current situation and future improvement and development possibilities. Nowadays, service engineering has become an increasingly important part field of study to contribute to global economy. Enhancing service productivity become crucial as service sector becomes more knowledge based and service based. Substantial studies show that excellent service is widely recognized as a decisive factor on different business environment (Voss et al., 2004a; Vilares and Coehlo, 2003). According to (Newman and Cowling, 1996), service sector and quality is “essential to corporate pro fitability and survival” and Rosen et al., (2003) described as “not just a corporate offering, but a competitive weapon”. Voss et al., (2002) and Johnston, (1959) indicated the complexity of service quality concept in service sector and there is no clear picture on the drivers for delivering in effective way.