Early on in Thomas Friedman's lecture at MIT, he talked a bit about how McDonalds is now experimenting with outsourcing their Drive Thru order system. I found this to be very interesting and logical, so I researched further....
I found articles about a particular McDonalds restaurant in Santa Maria, CA. One article, "Bronco Communications Launches McDonald's Drive-Thru Call Center" (2005), talks of how McDonald's has chosen to outsource their Drive Thru order system to a company called Bronco, which is located nearby in California as well. By using Voice Over the Internet (VOIP) capabilities, 125 workers have been able to process over 150,000 orders since this project began. Workers, at peak times, are able to process a staggering 95 orders per hour.
Not only is Bronco servicing order processing for McDonald's, but they have also launched a kiosk located in the restaurant, which customers can use to order and pay for their food quickly without waiting in line at the register. This is very similar to Self Check-out systems that we see at Wal Mart or CVS.
The idea behind using the Bronco Call Center is to both speed up delivery/ordering processing and to also alleviate stress on employees at McDonald's. It seems to me that this is a great idea. When I'm at a drive thru, sometimes it seems that the person taking orders is also struggling to process the order in the register while also having to tailor to the needs/take orders for the person who is after me. With this call center doing all of the order processing, some employees can focus on making food, while one employee runs the cash register without having to multitask between making money exchanges and taking orders.
I have not found any articles from post-2006, but I wonder if McDonald's is still outsourcing in Santa Maria; or if they've expanded this idea to other McDonald's sites...
No comments:
Post a Comment