Eutrusca
11-04-2006, 17:48
COMMENTARY: This is one of the more bizzre results of the improvement in communications. Weird. Just weird! LOL!
The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?th&emc=th)
Published: April 11, 2006
SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Like many American teenagers, Julissa Vargas, 17, has a minimum-wage job in the fast-food industry — but hers has an unusual geographic reach.
"Would you like your Coke and orange juice medium or large?" Ms. Vargas said into her headset to an unseen woman who was ordering breakfast from a drive-through line. She did not neglect the small details —"You Must Ask for Condiments," a sign next to her computer terminal instructs — and wished the woman a wonderful day.
What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast. She was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.
Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed.
The people behind this setup expect it to save just a few seconds on each order. But that can add up to extra sales over the course of a busy day at the drive-through.
While the call-center idea has received some attention since a scattered sampling of McDonald's franchises began testing it 18 months ago, most customers are still in the dark. For Meredith Mejia, a regular at a McDonald's in Pleasant Hill, Calif., near San Francisco, it meant that her lunch came with a small helping of the surreal. When told that she had just ordered her double cheeseburger and small fries from a call center 250 miles away, she said the concept was "bizarre."
And the order-taking is not always seamless. Often customers' voices are faint, forcing the workers to ask for things to be repeated. During recent rainstorms in Hawaii, it was particularly hard to hear orders from there over the din.
Ms. Vargas seems unfazed by her job, even though it involves being subjected to constant electronic scrutiny. Software tracks her productivity and speed, and every so often a red box pops up on her screen to test whether she is paying attention. She is expected to click on it within 1.75 seconds. In the break room, a computer screen lets employees know just how many minutes have elapsed since they left their workstations.
The pay may be the same, but this is a long way from flipping burgers.
"Their job is to be fast on the mouse — that's their job," said Douglas King, chief executive of Bronco Communications, which operates the call center.
The center in Santa Maria has been in operation for 18 months; a print-out tacked to a wall declares, "Over 2,540,000 served." McDonald's says it is still experimental, but it puts an unusual twist on an idea that is gaining traction: taking advantage of ever-cheaper communications technology, companies are creating centralized staffs of specially trained order-takers, even for situations where old-fashioned physical proximity has been the norm.
The goals of such centers are not just to cut labor costs but also to provide more focused customer service — improving the level of personal attention by sending Happy Meal orders on a thousand-mile round trip.
"It's really centralizing the function of not only taking the order but advising the customer on getting more out of the product, which can sell more — at least in theory," said Joseph Fleischer, chief technical editor for Call Center Magazine, an industry trade publication.
McDonald's is joined by the owner of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., CKE Restaurants, which plans to deploy a similar system later this year in restaurants in California.
Not everyone is sold on the idea. Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's Restaurants, said that the approach had not yet proved itself to be cost-effective. "Speed is incredibly important," he said, but "we haven't given this solution any serious thought."
Mr. Lynch said that Wendy's would need concrete evidence that call centers worked. For example, could remote order-takers increase sales by asking customers to order dessert?
Then there is the question of whether combining burgers, shakes and cyberspace is an example of the drive for efficiency run amok — introducing a mouse where the essential technology is a spatula.
[ This article is two pages long. Read the rest of the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th). ]
The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?th&emc=th)
Published: April 11, 2006
SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Like many American teenagers, Julissa Vargas, 17, has a minimum-wage job in the fast-food industry — but hers has an unusual geographic reach.
"Would you like your Coke and orange juice medium or large?" Ms. Vargas said into her headset to an unseen woman who was ordering breakfast from a drive-through line. She did not neglect the small details —"You Must Ask for Condiments," a sign next to her computer terminal instructs — and wished the woman a wonderful day.
What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast. She was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.
Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed.
The people behind this setup expect it to save just a few seconds on each order. But that can add up to extra sales over the course of a busy day at the drive-through.
While the call-center idea has received some attention since a scattered sampling of McDonald's franchises began testing it 18 months ago, most customers are still in the dark. For Meredith Mejia, a regular at a McDonald's in Pleasant Hill, Calif., near San Francisco, it meant that her lunch came with a small helping of the surreal. When told that she had just ordered her double cheeseburger and small fries from a call center 250 miles away, she said the concept was "bizarre."
And the order-taking is not always seamless. Often customers' voices are faint, forcing the workers to ask for things to be repeated. During recent rainstorms in Hawaii, it was particularly hard to hear orders from there over the din.
Ms. Vargas seems unfazed by her job, even though it involves being subjected to constant electronic scrutiny. Software tracks her productivity and speed, and every so often a red box pops up on her screen to test whether she is paying attention. She is expected to click on it within 1.75 seconds. In the break room, a computer screen lets employees know just how many minutes have elapsed since they left their workstations.
The pay may be the same, but this is a long way from flipping burgers.
"Their job is to be fast on the mouse — that's their job," said Douglas King, chief executive of Bronco Communications, which operates the call center.
The center in Santa Maria has been in operation for 18 months; a print-out tacked to a wall declares, "Over 2,540,000 served." McDonald's says it is still experimental, but it puts an unusual twist on an idea that is gaining traction: taking advantage of ever-cheaper communications technology, companies are creating centralized staffs of specially trained order-takers, even for situations where old-fashioned physical proximity has been the norm.
The goals of such centers are not just to cut labor costs but also to provide more focused customer service — improving the level of personal attention by sending Happy Meal orders on a thousand-mile round trip.
"It's really centralizing the function of not only taking the order but advising the customer on getting more out of the product, which can sell more — at least in theory," said Joseph Fleischer, chief technical editor for Call Center Magazine, an industry trade publication.
McDonald's is joined by the owner of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., CKE Restaurants, which plans to deploy a similar system later this year in restaurants in California.
Not everyone is sold on the idea. Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's Restaurants, said that the approach had not yet proved itself to be cost-effective. "Speed is incredibly important," he said, but "we haven't given this solution any serious thought."
Mr. Lynch said that Wendy's would need concrete evidence that call centers worked. For example, could remote order-takers increase sales by asking customers to order dessert?
Then there is the question of whether combining burgers, shakes and cyberspace is an example of the drive for efficiency run amok — introducing a mouse where the essential technology is a spatula.
[ This article is two pages long. Read the rest of the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th). ]