A recent Gallup survey discovered that 77% of Americans say that outsourcing is bad for the U.S. economy. “Beware: Your Customers Oppose Outsourcing” (subscription required) is the provocative title of the article published online in the Gallup Management Journal where the survey results are presented.

The question posed to 39,000 households was:

There has been some discussion recently about “outsourcing,” which is when American businesses hire workers in other parts of the world in order to save money. Which comes closer to your view . . . Outsourcing is bad for the American economy because it sends good jobs overseas, or, outsourcing is good for the American economy because it keeps the cost of goods and services down?

There is additional information in the article about how opinions on outsourcing vary by subgroups of age, education level and political party. How many of these households are trying to run a software company or IT department? Probably zero.

Hmm. . . Should you not outsource your software development because of the survey results? Should you not tell your customers?

Your customers won’t care.

That’s because the survey shows that Americans’ poor opinion of outsourcing is created by a lack of satisfaction and poor communication when calling an outsourced customer service phone line. The survey results include answers to various questions about outsourced call support centers.

This is not a survey about outsourcing, and certainly not outsourcing of software development. It turns out that what Americans don’t like is poor customer service. And who can argue with that?

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