McDonalds want to outsource drive-thru calls ??

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
If the network connection goes down, then one of the remaining employees at the store, maybe the store manager like you, would go outside to take the orders.

But that implies that someone besides the manager at the store is able to speak english.
Once this system is firmly in place, I find that hard to believe.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Oh, and I havn't been through a McD drive through since 1993. It's WAY faster to park and walk in.

Oh, that's right, I had totally forgotten that you can actually enter the store. 😛 I guess they won't get rid of all of their english-speaking workers, they need a couple to work the front too.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

I've worked for McDs for 3yrs, mainly in Drive-thru in the morning. I tell you with the limited people working in the mornings it can be, wait..., it IS hell sometimes.

Try managing 9+ vehicles with just yourself taking orders and cash, running back and forth upfront because your runner person upfront is too busy with the counter and helping the kitchen. No hashbrowns, short on coffee, orange juice. Orders are taken and cash is received. But vehicles are stuck going nowhere because someone decided to go cheap with labour and save that extra $5.40 an hour and wreck havoc. Everybody working is pulling 100%, but that aint enough. Taking the order is the LEAST of the restaurant's problem. It's getting the product to the customers that is.

Orders are further slowed down by customers deciding to do the following:

People coming to drive-thru to order 4 plus coffee. (once had a 12-coffee order thru Drive-thru)
People deciding to throw all their change at you and expect you to count thru it.
People wanting you to put the sugar in the coffee.
People forgetting their client card PIN #s or pressing wrong account
People deciding to take their time once we've received their payment and they've gotten their food to move forward.
People wanting to add/erase items from their order.
People not telling in advance what toy they want with their happy meals.
People parking their vehicle too fricken far from the window to receive their money.
People changing the order at the window.
People not ordering at the speaker and ordering at the window (messing up the order prirority screens)

Part of the stress is due to those POS headset/speaker system.

Part of the fault lies within management and the employees:
- managers not restocking hot items at night before the morning open (apple juice, orange juice, hash browns, hot chocolate)
- employees not prepping for the morning open (frozen OJ, AJ, coffee not brewed and maintained, out of coffee filters, out of coffee cups and lids, toys, dead headset batteries) Mainly stocking issues.
- lazy ass managers sitting down in their office eating their breakfast and reading their morning newspapers.

Part of the problem is the breakfast/lunch changeover:
- poor communication between kitchen and rest of staff what breakfast items are still available
- customers thinking all stores are consistent as far as when breakfast ends and lunch starts

Management is very focused on drive-thru line times. As soon as the order is placed and cash received, they want you to end the order, thus skewing the actual order time (time it takes from initial order to customer having received their product.) When the big beans come visit to the store, drive-thru is the place where it JUST has to perform so it gets special staffing assistance (managers come to help, one order window, one pay window). If attention like this is paid regularly instead of only when the big beans come to visit, things would go so much more smoothly more often.

Enough wih the poor grammar and babbling about nothing. Bottom line is, imo, taking the order is NOT the problem. Completing the order once it's taken is. Everybody has to move in parallel for efficiency to happen. If you've got the coffee, but the hashbrown is not there yet, or vice versa, things are held up. Anticipation and staying ahead is the name of the game. Management is just looking at dollar cost figures. Goodwill and opportunity cost costs just as much. Poor customer experience will cost a company more over the long run than saving that $5.40 from cutting back on staffing.

The one good thing I'll say is the new stores they've opened now has two order windows, where both employees can take the order at the same time, and one product receiving window. This is a significant improvement (when building is properly staffed and used).

This outsourcing will create communication problems. Kitchen would have to somehow relay messages to the call centre when they're out of buns/wraps/cheese or people upfront is out of OJ/AJ or there's a 4 min wait on Crispy chicken. Two way open communication is very important.

On another note, companies that force employees to take calls boom boom boom 15 seconds after one call ends is not making the environment more efficient at all. The average is 20-17 seconds between calls. They've eased up on the stat because they know nobody is meeting their unreasonable target. No time to rest your eyes. You work 2-3 hrs without break for stretching, moving, or looking away at the computer. We're humans, not robotic monkeys. If people are stressed or tired their productivity and motivation would go down. People feeling like the company is not treating them fairly would not put the company's interest first and foremost.

Pushing efficency to the max and stats up the ying-yang may not always be a good thing. When it comes to dollar vs goodwill, unfortunetely for the customers, it comes down to the bottom line dollar.

Sorry for not making a lot sense and poor grammar. Just random thought/ventillation.

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: PeeluckyDuckee
I've worked for McDs for 3yrs, mainly in Drive-thru in the morning. I tell you with the limited people working in the mornings it can be, wait..., it IS hell sometimes.

Try managing 9+ vehicles with just yourself taking orders and cash, running back and forth upfront because your runner person upfront is too busy with the counter and helping the kitchen. No hashbrowns, short on coffee, orange juice. Orders are taken and cash is received. But vehicles are stuck going nowhere because someone decided to go cheap with labour and save that extra $5.40 an hour and wreck havoc. Everybody working is pulling 100%, but that aint enough. Taking the order is the LEAST of the restaurant's problem. It's getting the product to the customers that is.

Orders are further slowed down by customers deciding to do the following:

People coming to drive-thru to order 4 plus coffee. (once had a 12-coffee order thru Drive-thru)
People deciding to throw all their change at you and expect you to count thru it.
People wanting you to put the sugar in the coffee.
People forgetting their client card PIN #s or pressing wrong account
People deciding to take their time once we've received their payment and they've gotten their food to move forward.
People wanting to add/erase items from their order.
People not telling in advance what toy they want with their happy meals.
People parking their vehicle too fricken far from the window to receive their money.
People changing the order at the window.
People not ordering at the speaker and ordering at the window (messing up the order prirority screens)

Part of the stress is due to those POS headset/speaker system.

Part of the fault lies within management and the employees:
- managers not restocking hot items at night before the morning open (apple juice, orange juice, hash browns, hot chocolate)
- employees not prepping for the morning open (frozen OJ, AJ, coffee not brewed and maintained, out of coffee filters, out of coffee cups and lids, toys, dead headset batteries) Mainly stocking issues.
- lazy ass managers sitting down in their office eating their breakfast and reading their morning newspapers.

Part of the problem is the breakfast/lunch changeover:
- poor communication between kitchen and rest of staff what breakfast items are still available
- customers thinking all stores are consistent as far as when breakfast ends and lunch starts

Management is very focused on drive-thru line times. As soon as the order is placed and cash received, they want you to end the order, thus skewing the actual order time (time it takes from initial order to customer having received their product.) When the big beans come visit to the store, drive-thru is the place where it JUST has to perform so it gets special staffing assistance (managers come to help, one order window, one pay window). If attention like this is paid regularly instead of only when the big beans come to visit, things would go so much more smoothly more often.

Enough wih the poor grammar and babbling about nothing. Bottom line is, imo, taking the order is NOT the problem. Completing the order once it's taken is. Everybody has to move in parallel for efficiency to happen. If you've got the coffee, but the hashbrown is not there yet, or vice versa, things are held up. Anticipation and staying ahead is the name of the game. Management is just looking at dollar cost figures. Goodwill and opportunity cost costs just as much. Poor customer experience will cost a company more over the long run than saving that $5.40 from cutting back on staffing.

The one good thing I'll say is the new stores they've opened now has two order windows, where both employees can take the order at the same time, and one product receiving window. This is a significant improvement (when building is properly staffed and used).

This outsourcing will create communication problems. Kitchen would have to somehow relay messages to the call centre when they're out of buns/wraps/cheese or people upfront is out of OJ/AJ or there's a 4 min wait on Crispy chicken. Two way open communication is very important.

On another note, companies that force employees to take calls boom boom boom 15 seconds after one call ends is not making the environment more efficient at all. The average is 20-17 seconds between calls. They've eased up on the stat because they know nobody is meeting their unreasonable target. No time to rest your eyes. You work 2-3 hrs without break for stretching, moving, or looking away at the computer. We're humans, not robotic monkeys. If people are stressed or tired their productivity and motivation would go down. People feeling like the company is not treating them fairly would not put the company's interest first and foremost.

Pushing efficency to the max and stats up the ying-yang may not always be a good thing. When it comes to dollar vs goodwill, unfortunetely for the customers, it comes down to the bottom line dollar.

Sorry for not making a lot sense and poor grammar. Just random thought/ventillation.

So what you are trying to tell us is that you are pissed because your job is now in jeopardy?? 😀 😀

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

Nope, 3yrs was enough for me. Got out 5yrs ago. There's people that was there for 10yrs when I used to be there though.

Just another perspective on things I guess.

 

[spidey07]

I think we should just flat out nuke india.

 

[flot]

The McDonalds by my office frequently has an order taker standing outside with a touch panel, who walks down the row from car to car. Usually she can get 4-5 cars ahead of the speaker system. Having a real live person there (although somewhat odd) makes the process about 100x better than yelling into the speaker.

The downside is that if you don't really know what you want, she's often so far ahead that you can't see their menu. I suspect she has a collection of paper ones or whatnot, but I could just imagine the hilarity of, say, old people trying to get her to describe all the different things they sell...

 

[WiseOldDude]

At least it is ND instead of India!

That of course will allow dumbya to finially classify mcdonalds as a manufacturing indurstry and boast about all the new jobs in manufacturing.

 

[flot]

I think everyone may be missing an important point, which is that while you have to have an order taker in each of 100 mcdonalds, you certainly do not need 100 remote order takers to service 100 stores.

For one thing, the time zone difference will be tremendous - it may be lunchtime rush here but it is the beginning of the post-breakfast-lull somewhere else...

From a person-effiency time, it probably looks like tremendous savings on paper. And honestly I suspect the employees would be happier if they didn't have to put up with all that nonsense, I can't imagine they enjoy yelling over the rotten microphone system either. They will simply read an order off a screen and hand it to you. The back-end inventory etc would have to be beefed up (excuse the pun) to allow for better computerized control of order taking, but that's not impossible.

Maybe we can get robots to push the food out the window... 🙂

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: flot
For one thing, the time zone difference will be tremendous - it may be lunchtime here but it is the beginning of the post-breakfast-lull somewhere else...

EXCELLENT point. Although I'm not against this whole idea, I didn't think of that.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

People have this love/hate relationship with call centres.

It's bad enough when they call the local number it redirects you to the call centre, now you're right at the fricken store and it still redirects you to the call centre. lol 🙂 Imagine all the rage from people screaming at the top of their lungs "I'm in front of your store and I've reached where?!! India?!?! " haha Some people would die from high blood pressure.

How can call centre agents maintain two-way communication with the stores while taking orders and be kept up to date as to which store has what or short what items? Again, if that two way communication isn't there there will be problems.

When a customer orders 20 piece nugget but the store doesn't have any immediately available, the agent and the customer isn't aware. After the customer pays he ends up having told by guy at the window there'd be a 5 minute wait after he's paid, he'd be asking how come no one told him about that before he ordered?? Or if he does ask before placing the order, the call centre agent would have to ask the customer to hold a moment while he calls the restaurant to check on stock?

Drive-thru is meant to be quick and painless. It's quite the polar opposite. Perhaps things have improved since then. I've anticipated and prepared every morning before I start each morning. Even then things still go wrong outside of my control (staffing mainly). How about focusing on small sure-fire improvement measures instead of drastic changes that instead of improving, will add to the list of eisting problems?

The timezone thing may work for some, but not all companies. The newsprint call centre that I work for has many markets. Each team is responsible for two markets, managing two time zones. When other markets are busy we jump in to take calls. We're not trained for the calls and guess what? We end up taking messages and having CSRs who are call them back when the queque is down. That's disservice to the customer and a short term fix. Some times it's so busy messages are not answered until too late in the day or the day after when it's no longer useful to the customer. With the new system coming out, we're supposed to manage 6-8 different markets over 3-4 time zones. I don't mind company utilizing idle employee resources, but train people to do the job properly.

Similar issue with the bank I work for as well. "Oh I'm sorry, but the department you called has an overflowed queque and they've transferred you to me even though I'm not in that department, have no access to their sytem, or trained to do what they do. How may I help you?" "I just have limited access to their system, if you'd like more information I'd have to transfer you back to where you originally intended to call"

Some of the issues and customer problems companies create for themselves. Even when numerous staff voice their concern to their immediate supervisors they get the cold shoulder. "Oh nothing we can do about nor do I know what's being done about it, but this is going to be the norm from now on."

 

[NFS4]

WORST.IDEA.EVAR