The main idea of this paper is that service science and engineering are inescapably tied to the understanding and modeling of customers. The authors first defined a new category of production systems, customer-intensive systems, where the customer is a significant part of the input. They also argued that almost all service systems are customer-intensive systems, and presented a strong argument for customercentric representations.

Moreover, customer intensity seems to require at least four radical changes in the way science and engineering should be practiced: production models and systems should consider that some of the inputs are loaded with human-values; formal models of customers are needed; human perception of time must be taken in account, especially in optimization issues; and service quality control must include customer expectations and the quality of the process according to the customer view. Another possible consequence that they are investigating is whether approaching service systems from a customer intensity perspective allows to decrease the apparent complexity of services. They suggest the possibility to reduce the complexity of service systems by decoupling the complexity of the customer input from the service process.

Finally, customer intensity is likely to affect and require transformation in service design and management. However, we expect these other components of SSME to require less radical change in methods, since they already incorporate many concepts, methodologies, and practices principled on human issues.