In order to obtain services, the customer generally has to come inside the factory. Thus, in most conventional service situations, clients enter banks, vacationers go inside travel agencies, and university students attend classes in classrooms. Furthermore, once inside the service factory, the customer actually has to do a bit of work. Indeed, in the case of some services, a substantial amount of work. Not only does the customer come inside a service factory, and do some work, in many cases the quality of the service the customer receives is almost as dependent on the customer as it is on the efforts of the service provider. The customer can therefore be seen as a co-producer in service firms, and is, in a substantial sense, a part-time employee. In most service settings, this can be an opportunity to save costs and spark innovation.
The Web site of a well-known international service company illustrates how the medium can be used to manage profitably customers as part-time employees. The international courier company UPS allows customers access to its system through its Web site. The site reduces uncertainty by allowing customers to track shipments traveling through the system by entering the package receipt number. Furthermore, customers can request a pickup and find the nearest drop-off site. UPS still uses a large team of service agents and a major telephone switchboard to deal with customer inquiries. Now, however, millions of tracking requests are handled on-line each month. Many would have used the more expensive and time-consuming telephone system. Clearly, UPS gains considerable savings by switching customers from telephone to Web parcel tracking. Furthermore, customers prefer this form of service delivery, otherwise, they would not have adopted it with such alacrity.
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