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What does it mean to "provide great service"?

Q: I find the last statement of the manifest vague. What does it mean to "provide great service"? It is so vague that it doesn't have much value in a service manifest IMHO.

A:

The Service Responsibility

  • REQUIRED: Fulfill the Service Contract
  • RECOMMENDED: Fulfill the expectations set to Customers by the Service Description (implicitly or explicitly)
  • LEADING: Surpass the Customers expectations.

The service must handle anything that is thrown at him/her

Service Descriptions

  • Services are described both explicitly and implicitly
  • Services need to be aware of their implicit responsibility (customer expectations) and adapt
  • Customers are trained through extensive marketing and branding
  • Great service descriptions and their related contracts are often adopted by competitors:
    • (IRL example: McDonalds & Burger King - What's the difference?)

Example: Evolution of the CustomerService

  • Started out for one client on basic WS-I tech
  • Added support for more dialects to attract more consumers (REST etc.)
  • Got more clients and implemented a smart cache based on Lucene, supporting more load and more advanced queries
  • Responded to client demand delivering sensitive information, but ONLY over a WS-Security enabled channel
  • Added Geo-positioning (lat/long) information about customers proactively which created spontaneous applications in the organization

See http://wiki.community.objectware.no/download/attachments/3769961/Objectware-SOA_Real_World_DagenIFI.pptx for more details :)