April 11th, 2006
Outsourcing the Drive Through Window
It had never occured to me that the drive through window would be outsourced. According to the NYT article, McDonald’s is experimenting with routing the drive through orders of 40 locations to workers at call centers in Mississippi and Wyoming. The audio is routed from the drive through board mic/speaker to a call center, and the order is sent back to the restaurant over the Internet. I’m rather doubtful that the claimed speed efficiencies justify the costs involved. Minimum wage workers take the order in either place, no? But if you change Mississippi and Wyoming to Kerala and Punjab . . .
Interesting.
