APQC's 2005 "Calculating and Reporting Customer Profitability" study found that, for the most part, best-practice organizations do not "fire" unprofitable customers; rather, they arm themselves with this information to analyze the root causes of the lackluster profit and make adjustments in pricing, packaging, and/or levels of service accordingly. Four of five of the study best-practice partners, and half of the study sponsors, stated that they have been able to use their customer profitability knowledge to convert unprofitable customers to profitable customers. Study participants have been able to accomplish this via:

• appropriately modifying service levels and/or pricing,
• re-assigning relationships to different cost-to-serve delivery solutions,
• deepening relationships across product families,
• an analysis of primary cost drivers and associated changes in product/service delivery as a result (for example, developing more economical packaging alternatives if packaging is determined to be the primary cost driver),
• an analysis of risk and pricing factors on portfolio performance,
• target marketing and cross-selling, and
• discussing cost-to-serve activities and rationalizing them.

*Source: Calculating and Reporting Customer Profitability. APQC, 2006.