INTRODUCTION

In the past 20 years, service delivery has moved from the “bricks-and-mortar” shop front to the home telephone, to the Internet, to the cell phone. Consumers have come to expect convenience, rapid response times and ubiquitous 24/7 access to the services that they need – and there does not appear to be any slowdown in the number of delivery channels and services that will be available to these consumers in the future.

The challenges of ubiquitous service delivery are compounded by the availability of technologies (most notably, the Internet) which move consumers to a global marketplace. Today’s organizations realize that they are no longer competing against two other local providers, or even ten other national providers – they are ...

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