Jonny, we do not have any "Expression" field types in V1, so you cannot create a field that displays product of two field's values.
Your approach will work well. Actually if there is a customer assigned in a field, you could set priority to 1. Workitem types can be customized with rules - here is link on how to customize wit types http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243849.aspx . Check especially field rule section at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194953.aspx