McDonald's says it may outsource drive-thrus (1 Viewer)

[Philip_G]

I doubt the goal is cost cutting, I think improving service is more like it.

Keep in mind McD's is like two different companies, just because the corporate owned stores do this doesn't mean the owner/operator stores will, some might, but most are probably too cheap. Who knows, maybe it'll save everyone a buck in the end, but I'm not seeing how.

 

[Joe Szott]

Service is a red herring, this is straight from that article:



It's about money and making more of it. I still hold that 3/4 of them could go jump off a bridge and the corp would be healthier financially than ever.

If you want to see a burger place run right, go to an In'n'Out. Great food, fresh, cheap, excellent service, the kids there make $7+/hr, they obviously enjoy it, and they all get paid vacation as well. Gee, and it's not a public corporation.

PS - It is a little hard to go to an In'n'Out in Denver though

 

[CharlesD]

Oh come now, when has outsourcing any job been about improving service? Its always about costs. They're doing this so they don't have to pay a high school kid $6/hr and can instead pay someone in India $6/day.

 

[Philip_G]

Comments like this make me wonder if you've even read the thread or the article. I can TELL you the company that will likely operate the call center, and I can tell you which cities in ND they'll likely be in, because McD's already outsources to them. The CEO making an ND comment wasn't just an offhand joke :rolleyes
How is paying someone in a call center 10 bucks an hour a cost savings over paying someone 6 or 6.50 to work in the store?
Most of the support for the POS systems, to the UNIX system that "runs" the store is already supported by these people, they have dedicated call centers for that, hell they SELL the computers the stores run on. It's not rocket science...

 

[CharlesD]

Philip_G:

You're right I did not read the article. When I heard this story some months ago the story was that they were outsourcing to India, not North Dakota. As someone inundated by calls originating in India on behalf of my credit card company I did not question that version. Based on that experience and having dealt with Dell's customer service I can assure you that in those cases the outsourcing had nothing to do with "improving service".

Obviously the McD's instance is different situation. My apologies.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Wouldn't an obvious solution be to replace this equipment?

 

[Shawn C]

I think McDonald's should keep their jobs in the communities where their stores are located. Granted, more jobs are created for someone else in the country, but I think that keeping the jobs local promotes better community relationships.

But, when you think about it, is anyone really going to lose a job over this at the busier stores? Someone still needs to put the order together and hand it to you. Someone still needs to work the window and the people at the counter really can't do that at the same time.