I can see it now: a mob of McDonald's employees protesting outside of a suburban McDonald's. Protest signs reading "Don't Eliminate Jobs" or "Super-size me but don't Outsource me!"
McDonald's and CKE Restaurants (owners of Hardee's and Carl's Jr.) are experimenting with national call centers of highly trained customer service specialists that would take your drive-thru order the next time you visit their restaurant. They are banking on the fact that someone in Santa Maria, CA can do a better job than the person standing only 100 ft from you the last time you pulled up for a Happy Meal. And not only better, but faster. And in the fast food business speed translates into better service and more profit.
This may or may not work. The article from the New York Times mentions some problems with transmission quality between the pilot restaurants in Hawaii and the call center in California. Often the operators have to ask the customer to repeat themselves. I'm not sure how this is much different from the current setup but it may irk customers and cause bad will.
I have to say that I'm excited about the idea, though. I love the idea of companies becoming more efficient and therefore passing the cost savings on to the customer. But what if they don't pass them on? How could they not? In a competitive environment (like fast food) if you can get a cost edge on a competitor, you are most likely going to want to increase customers by decreasing prices. If your competitor can't match your efficiencies and therefore prices, they will go out of business. That leaves more customers for the innovative restaurant. And that means more profit. We'll just have to see how this turns out.
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