ABSTRACT
The clear implication is, therefore, that customers must be in a position to develop and refine their interfaces with the service provider to enable the whole service to be provided with precision and at a pace appropriate to the accelerated cycle. The effects upon customers of service supply moving to a third party will vary considerably depending upon the complexity of the service requirement. Customers play a key role in both service performance and the level of unit cost since they define the requirement and may provide critically important inputs to enable the service provider to deliver the service. Service performance will increase and unit cost will reduce only if there is a matched improvement in performance from both the service provider and the customer. The general impact of a third party service provider upon customers will be significant and sometimes subtle.
