A recent study by researchers at University of Michigan and University of Richmond shows that outsourcing/offshoring certain aspects of your business can affect customer loyalty. The research, titled “Does Offshoring Impact Customer Satisfaction?” and posted on the Social Science Research Network, points to collected data that shows:
offshoring of front office processes that interface directly with the customer has a negative association with customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, perceived quality and customer expectations. On the other hand, we find that offshoring back office processes that do not interface directly with the customer has a positive association with customer loyalty.
Well…I could have told you that myself…and many of you probably could have guessed this was the case. It is good to have some academic research to back up my ‘gut’ feeling. I’m still reading through the article, but so far the research methods seem fair and sound.
Hat tip to ArsTechnica for the link to this research.
BTW – You can download the paper in its entirety at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1010457
Related articles by Zemanta
