Tony Hsieh has fascinating discussion on outsourcing in Delivering Happiness. They could have outsourced two big parts of their business: - Their telephone sup

Tony Hsieh has fascinating discussion on outsourcing in Delivering Happiness. They could have outsourced two big parts of their business: - Their telephone support - Their fulfillment center These are both things that, typically, are very expensive to run. The temptation to outsource is huge. The trouble is, these are also two of the most crucial interaction points for customers. So if they don't work correctly, the business will suffer. What Zappos discovered was that by outsourcing, they ceded a lot of control and insight into their business to other parties who didn't really give a damn whether Zappos succeeded or not. Outsourcing fulfillment almost destroyed them because aligning incentives and priorities with outside parties is so very difficult. When they returned to doing fulfillment themselves, they figured out a bunch of ways they could not only do it well, they could do it in a way that was so surprisingly good that people were blown away and told all their friends. Similarly, by maintaining control over their phone support, they could make sure everyone answered the phone in a way that took care of each customer thoroughly. No operators hurrying people off the lines to keep their scores up, reasonable autonomy to make people happy. As a Zappos employee, immersed in the day to day of Zappos' business, they reflected the internal culture to everyone they talked to. This would be hard to do through an outsourced firm. So can you outsource UX? Even software development? Sure. Maybe at first. But eventually, your company is going to need to have an internal understanding of these things. If your success is tied to UX but it's nowhere in the heads of your people or in your company's DNA, eventually you're going to lose out on opportunities that come to you only when people are invested exclusively in your success. Eventually you're going to have the crap beat out of you by a company in another city made out of two guys who really know UX and code and iterate all night and all weekend because they don't have to haggle with anyone to reach perfection.