Enterprise viability depends on maintaining the goodwill of the enterprise brand. Damage to reputation might never be recovered, or might only be recovered at great expense and distraction.
Most outsourced business processes are essential to the enterprise’s operations. Particularly in customer relationship management and help desk support services, outsourcers may directly “touch” the enterprise’s customer without disclosing the existence of the outsourcing relationship. Reputational risk is especially significant in such customer-facing “front office” services. However, even non-voice interactions with customers can have the same impact on an enterprise’s goodwill.
Brand risk management techniques include the use of scripts, supervision, random audits, ongoing training and customer feedback. Legal issues in reputational risk can arise where the enterprise customer wishes to terminate a service provider, redirect its efforts or adjust the pricing to reflect a loss of goodwill.