I was just thinking that Americans had literally outsourced everything they could to India, when somebody brought to my notice what could be the next wave of outsourcing - Fast Food Order Outsourcing. Sounds yummy ?
McDonald's has started experimenting in a new direction in about 40 of its fast food outlets across America. Since the last one and a half years, McDonald's has been routing orders from its fast food outlets scattered across America in California, Hawaii, Mississippi and Wyoming to a hi-tech call center located at Santa Clara in California via the Internet. Operated by Bronco Communications, call center employees from this company process the order instantly and relay it back to the respective outlets where the orders are displayed on the TV console for the caterers to attend to the orders and dispatch them and for the cashiers to collect the displayed amount.
The experiment started as a result of complaints from customers across the US of the differences in English accents of the order takers that created gaps in communications, with the result that customers got served items that were not even remotely close to what they ordered. As a step towards solving this problem, McDonald's decided to establish uniformity in order taking, by routing the orders to call centers.The CKE restaurant's chain is also set to try out this at five of the Carl Jr's restaurants in California.
Now, think what the next logical step would be for McDonald's and CKEs after the feasibility of the process has been established ? Save some money and outsource the Fast Food Order taking to India, right?. Don't be surprised if the next time you are at an American McDonald's drive thru to order food and a voice crackles out of the speaker, "Good morning, this is Vikram from Bangalore. What would you like to order today ?.............Would you like to have some fries with that? ....How about some coke on the go ?"
There's not much else you can say but, "I'm lovin' it."
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