http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3080270 Associated Press OAK BROOK, Ill. — McDonald's Corp., the world's largest restaurant chain, is testing the use of remote call centers to handle drive-thru orders in an effort to improve service. Company officials said the idea, being tested at a small number of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest, is aimed at reducing the number of mistakes at the drive-thru window. "If you're in L.A. and you hear a person ... with a North Dakota accent taking your order, you'll know what we're up to," McDonald's Chief Executive Officer Jim Skinner said during a presentation to analysts Thursday in New York. The strategy would help process orders faster and allow McDonald's employees to focus on delivering better customer service, the company said. "You have a professional order taker with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders," said Matthew Paull, the chief financial officer. Paull said a "heavy percentage" of complaints the company receives are from drive-thru customers who got the wrong order. "Even if 95 percent of the time it is right, those 5 percent are very upset with us," he said. McDonald's spokeswoman Anna Rozenich said today it was too early to say whether the outsourcing strategy would be implemented systemwide.
How very sporting of them to do this in an effort to improve customer service. Do ya suppose minimum wage is less in the new 'order taker specialists' state?
As long as they are in the US and speak ENGLISH and not India-glish or whatever the hell these companies are using today then it's cool with me.
Who the hell takes it personally enough to call McDonalds headquarters because some drop-out didn't cut the onions?
wonder if they are hiring? working at a call center, we all got a crack of it when somebody showed us here
i can not for the life of me understand why this would improve customer service; getting my order right; etc.
Someone explain to me the difference between an LA and a North Dakota accent. **** McDonalds, their food sucks and their commercials are so lame it makes me want to stomp on kittens.
This sounds like a good idea all around. 1. It should provide for more skilled people taking orders, since they will become "order taking specialists", ie that's all they will be doing so they'll get good at it. This should lead to less errors and a better customer experience. 2. It will help improve efficiency at McDonald's as a whole, since the order takers who usually sit idle during slow periods can be spread across all the stores, balancing capacity. This should lower costs overall for McDonalds, which will help to increase shareholder value and help McDonalds keep prices low for customers. Sounds like a good deal to me.
This doesn’t make any sense. How will this improve customer service? If your order is wrong are you supposed to talk to the people inside about an order that was placed with a third party service provider. IMO this is about saving money, not improving service. If you want to improve service make a burger with real meat and teach your employees to talk like they know what the heck they’re doing. Give me Whataburger any day
I hate their menu I hate their commercials I hate this "outsourcing" crap I hate McDonalds so much, I don't even like Chipotle either!
