a customer service

Submitted by admin on Wed, 06/08/2011 - 10:21
photo
  1. introduction
  2. what it is
    1. customer services
    2. service demand

introduction

The Internet is the 21st century repository of human knowledge. That knowledge is delivered to people via the web. The web is all the documents, delivered to people using a web-based service. This service talks the HTTP protocol. The HTTP protocol is one of the application layer protocols in the Internet Protocol Suite.

You can't call a service offered to customes over the web a "web service". A web service is formally defined as a complicated machine-to-machine service. Thank the W3C for that one.

what it is

The Internet is full of chains of suppliers and consumers. Price comparison web sites list product prices for buyers. Sites include bizrate, pricegrabber and shopzilla. Price comparison sites make money by charging sellers to list their products.

customer services

People want to consume services like these.

  1. address book
  2. blog
  3. calendar
  4. news
  5. webmail
  6. forum
  7. office document
  8. photo album
  9. video
  10. wiki

Enterprises want to consume services like these.

  1. accounts
  2. CM (Content Management)
  3. collaboration
  4. CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  5. finance
  6. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
  7. HRM (Human Resource Management)
  8. orders
  9. service desk
  10. training

service demand

two types

  • web hosting customers who want a web site to fill one of their needs, such as product sales to the public or project management within the enterprise.
  • infrastructure customers who want a web hosting partner to run all their computer services, such as workflow, development and administration.

10 customer, 10,000 customers, 10,000,000 customers.

service supply

Supplying a web service is not the same as running it.

A person who builds an Internet service is a supplier.

A supplier develops a service

  1. a hobbyist has a good idea and uses a site building tool to create a service.
  2. a web agency builds a service for a small business.
  3. a large enterprise builds many services using in-house teams.

The supplier then needs to run the service.

A site run by starving artists is not expected to be high quality.