Stuart just posted this at CCV: McDonalds article.

My first reaction was one of horror. This is surely taking things a little too far. Then I started to put some thought into it and realised this could go either way. There’s scope for major success or failure.

The golden arches
The logistics are quite interestig for starters - The sound needs to be sent from the terminal to the call centre, and then the order needs to be sent back to the resturant. All of this can be accomplished over IP, so each resturant just needs an internet connection. Issues here are latency and reliability. If there’s a big delay then the customer will get upset, and if the line is down then no order. I suppose in this instance a real person would step in.

The customer perception
The customer is not going to expect to be sent to a call centre, so when they roll up they will expect a voice immediately. This means no queueing. McD’s will have to staff their call centre carefully to ensure that this doesn’t happen - and the 3 daily peaks of breakfast, lunch and dinner will have to be carefully thought about.

The real fact is that the customer shouldn’t realise that there’s anything different from normal going on. Ok, it may not be a local accent, but there’s sufficient “transients” nowadays for this to be accepted. As long as speed of service is there and there’s no latency on the line, the customer doesn’t lose at all.

Quality of service
This is where the make-or-break is. We could have agents that don’t understand anything about the order that they’re taking. There’ll be wrong orders, complaints, lack of ownership by the staff in the call centre. It’ll be a mess.

But I don’t think it’ll turn out like that. I think that this presents a chance to improve the order process. Training is easier. There’s likely to be less people to train and they can all be trained by one trainer. This means the process will be much more uniform. These people can get to know the products better, and will always be aware of the latest offers. Finally - it’d be possible to record the transactions to improve the service more later on.

Loss of jobs
The final argument that is always made will be about the loss of jobs. McD’s could probably run each resturant with one less member of staff. There’ll be the same uproar that there usually is about jobs being lost. But what’s the problem? This is progress. Saving money like this gives us cash to advance elsewhere. Ok, so it may only result in gassing chickens, but progress is progress!

So…
I think this is cool. We may not like the sound of it (and it’s not happening in the UK yet, anyway) but I do believe that it’s good to change the way things work now and again. You never know, you may prefer it. I know many people who complained about the thought of telephone banking who now can’t live without it.

Regards,
DB