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Competition has become more fierce due to the rising globalisation of business markets. This especially affects the machine manufacturers. An FIR study [1] showed that by now approximately 75% of the machine manufacturers are working in a saturated or even degenerating market. New company strategies and aims have to be found in order to ensure a companies competitiveness. Of main importance is the delivery of product attendant services. In classic service concepts a large amount of product attendant services are provided by local establishments in the countries of sale, local co-operation partners or world-wide acting service personnel. These concepts bear a great financial, organisational and legal risk within them, which smaller and medium sized enterprises (SME) are not prepared to take. Therefore alternative service methods have to be developed. A constantly increasing number of innovative machine manufacturers are already using the new information and communication technology (Video-Head-Sets, Desktop-Video-Conferencing-Systems, Application-Sharing, White-Boarding, etc.) more effectively in the field of machine related services. These IT based services reaching over large distances are commonly referred to as TeleServices.

A highly important business area of the machine manufactures are services in the after-sales-phase [2]. This not only includes warranty cases but also repairs and most of all maintenance. Customers these days do not only expect a very high quality product from the manufactures but also a very high quality and effective service. In view of these special circumstances and developments the importance of service is constantly rising. This makes service a measure with which competitors can be differentiated. In many business branches services often have a greater influence on the decision to buy a product than the price or even the function have. The following requirements have to be fulfilled if a company wants to achieve customer satisfaction with its services:

The importance of service and its differentiation potential respective global competition is without doubt rising. Both manufacturers and customers can profit from several benefits due to the available information and communication technology support of traditional service concepts and methods. To fully profit from these benefits in practice it is necessary to fulfil the mentioned requirements customer acceptance, organisational integration and technical aspects. If this is accomplished TeleService offers adequate rationalising potential. This and the upcoming developments in the information and communication technology will result in the realisation of (nowadays) visionary concepts and the constantly rising dissemination of TeleService. Companies which want to stay competitive on the international markets will have to deal with TeleService.