Friday, March 11, 2005
A Happy Meal and a Mango Lassi
Hey, it's bad enough that blue collar jobs long ago moved offshore and white collar jobs are rapidly moving to Bucharest and Bangalore. Now there's a move afoot to outsource order-takers at your local Mickey Ds! Soon the only jobs left will be the burger flippers, garbage men, and IRS agents. Oh yeah ... and the Homeland Security secret police.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp. wants to outsource your neighborhood drive-through. The world's largest fast-food chain said on Thursday it is looking into using remote call centers to take customer orders in an effort to improve service at its drive-throughs.Don't buy the "North Dakota" crap ... you can bet good money that, sooner rather than later, those order-takers will be somewhere in India.
"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 Jim Skinner told analysts at the Bear Stearns Retail, Restaurants & Apparel Conference in New York. Call center professionals with "very strong communication skills" could help boost order accuracy and ultimately speed up the time it takes customers to get in and out of the drive-throughs, the company said.
