Read the following statement by the chief service officer of an elevator maintenance company:

We found ourselves unable to compete against the really big elevator manufacturers, yet we were great at providing maintenance services. Also the margin on new elevator systems had gotten smaller, but servicing profits were holding up well. So I guess it was obvious; we sold our manufacturing business and focused on offering a subscription-based maintenance service. We aim to provide a real partnership-based service. We provide a single point of contact, who is an industry-leading expert, for every customer. One of his or her jobs will be to teach our customers what is in their best interests in terms of how best to use the elevators so as to minimise our emergency call-outs. Of course, some customers will be better at this than others. I guess in the longer term we will have to decide what to do with the less compliant customers, especially if they seem to be taking advantage of our service guarantee. I hope to grow this service to double the number of clients we have at the moment. That should let us gather plenty of information on the performance of different elevator systems. And information is valuable.

Use the criteria listed in the chapter to decide if the chief service officer is describing a partnership relationship.