I try to keep my opinions to myself as a general rule, but when I see stuff like thiso No: o No: I just don't think this kind of business practice is what made America great.uzzled: Guess I've finally gotten old and out of touch. http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-012609-sjf-drivethroughs.770ed0f.html
Nope you're not old or out of touch.. Everything is getting outsourced due to the cost of labour. This kind of business practices is what is going to put America into the garbage can, and make big business richer.:moonu:
McD's all over the U.S. are starting to do this also. But they don't use a centralized call center. The person on the other end of the drive thru is working from their own home, mostly in the upper midwest, also some in NM. Many are live at home moms who have no job opportunities where they live, mostly small towns/rural areas. No calls go overseas at all. At least that is how McDonalds is doing this, can't speak for any other businesses.
I suppose a voice recognition system at the drive thru will be next. People will be screaming at the top of their lungs "BIG MAC!" "Um, I'm sorry, I didn't get that." the automated voice will say. I tend not to use the drive thru at fast food joints or the bank. I find it is almost always faster to go inside. I will see a car pull into the line at the drive thru at the same time I park, and when I come out, that same car is usually still in line. Doing this will only reinforce my decision to go inside. uzzled:
I really don't understand this statement. It said nothing about outsourcing to another country. A quick google search reports they are keeping the call centers in the USA. Why, because a business has found a way to be more efficient...improving (lowering) the amount of errors being made in the drive through and improving their bottom line at the same time, does that mean America is going into the garbage can??? o No:
This actually makes sense. That frees up a body to help on the line or food preperation. Maybe the dining room will actually be clean now. :TU:
I think the errors are made by the line cooks. After looking at the reciept, it is correct but the food is not. Or they try to be a smart a$$. One time I asked for no tomato and got four :af: . I guess it is all about making more money for the business.
There was a pizza chain that was doing this over 2 years ago- instead of calling a local number, you called a 1-800 number and placed your order at a call center (in the USA) and the order would pop up on the computer screen at the local pizza place... they said it actually helped keep thier workers working and make sure every call gets answered... problem is the wait times... one place can only make so many pizzas! Idk, I don't agree with this... same as at the home depot and lowes around here, I don't know how many places are doing this, but now they have automated cashier machines for self-checkout. Way to eliminate yet another good job for high school and college students! I refuse to use those machines even if theres no line at them. :af: I guess theres a bright side for mcdonalds and other companies that do it that way- creating jobs for people who have limited choices... where I live I wish I could work from home at night answering the phone since theres nothing out here, and the construction biz is S-L-O-W.
Pizza Hut is using a call center in southeast Kansas. It used to be that if the local restaurant was busy, they would just let the phone ring, which was quite annoying. Now if the local business doesn't answer after 4 rings, the call is relayed to the call center and you place the order through them. They send in the order through the internet to the local restaurant, and 30 minutes later you are eating your pizza. It was a big improvement here. By the way, I loved the Ron White Video. I think I will forward his wife's suggestion to Pfizer!
i would think it would mean at least 1 less job per restaurant per shift. if you don't have to have a person manning the order window, that's one less minimum wage job per shift the company has to pay [wages, unemployment, workers comp, and any other costs incurred with having employees] on. make one person sitting in their own home, or in some generic "call center" take the place of several order takers, and you are looking at a major cost savings to the company..... never mind the people who depended on that job at the restaurant.
It means they have to have one less person on the payroll to run the window. Nothing else will change except the amount of errors made over mis-understandments.
Like I said, maybe I've just gotten old and out of touch.o No: It just seems like cutting your nose off to spite your face. Maybe I'm too "old school" in too many ways and will never get used to this kind of stuff. I can understand it working in rural areas where things are spread out and the money earned gets used up for gas, child care, etc. by someone trying to support a family on what that kind of job pays. But this was in Charlotte, NC! A fairly populated urban area! I just think it's taking a step (or more than one) back wards. Maybe part of me sees this trickling down from the big companies to smaller stuff in the future like surgeons sitting in a call center watching monitors of med-students operating. They could oversee at least 5 or 6 operations at once, right? He just has to follow a few scripts while the student just follows a few directions. Easy as pie.uzzled: Or general contractors doing the same while vo-tech students build your house. No reason he couldn't have several dozen buildings going at once and never have to set foot on any property, right? It'd be more time efficient and cost effective, wouldn't it? Those 2 factors make it a good plan, doesn't it? It's not like the contractor really does any manual labor, he just "oversees"(sarcasm here, no offence to anyone. I know better than that). Anyone can drive a nail in a board, can't they?uzzled: OK, I shouldn't say that. Someone will get ideas.uzzled: I need to get back to keeping my opinions to myself and my mouth shut.
Dwayne, It already has taken place in the medical field. Think how many Physician's Assistants and Licensed Practitioners there are already that work under one doctor. If you go in for surgery what are the chances that an Anesthesiologist will be putting you out instead of an anesthesist? Practically zero. Even Radiologist are going to RA's to save hospitals money by better using there resources and spreading the thin amount of trained specialist out more. I'm not saying it's a great idea in some instances for the patient but for the most part it seems to work well. Taking it down to the fast food level is overkill. It seems like it will be real easy for them to pass the buck of mistakes to the unseen entity in Kansas (or whereever) and the consumer just has to suck it up. You can bet it's done to eliminate the number of labor hours per shift too, the chances of them using it to improve service/cleanliness of the restaurant are slim.
The truth in that statement is the real problem in the building trades and maybe corporate America. I have been a State Certified Licensed Plumbing and A/C Contractor since 1975 in New York and Florida. I have built mostly commercial buildings in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Florida. In Florida in all those years not once has a building inspector asked to see my license or anyone's license or apprentice card on any jobsite no matter how big the project was. I could pull a permit for a project and have Mickey Mouse and Goofy build it and never set foot on the site and it would be okay. Most inspectors were never really critical as long as it looked good. Never once has an inspector pulled out a level and check for correct pitch on a pipe. In the "northern states" the inspectors always made sure I was licensed and on site or I had a journyman as supervisor. The also wanted to see the apprentice cards of the guys working for me on the project as well as the other tradesmen. Once at 11:00 PM I was fixing a heater for a customer in a blizzard in Buffalo, New York and when I came back out to my truck an inspector wanted to see my license. That kind of policing keeps the rif-raf out and wages up. With this anything goes policy now you can have anyone "nail the boards together" and get your Cetificate of Occupancy and turn the building over to the customer. Builders can now get away with murder. Do you really want unqualified people deciding what you need medically? The insurance companies are now calling the shots and telling doctors who and what they can care for in most cases now. My wife just was called to be in the jury for a guy suing an insurance company because they would not authorize the MRI the doctor called for when the guy fell off a ladder at work and landed on his back. The guy waited a almost year before ending up getting back surgery and now is paralyzed and a quadrapalegic. Would the MRI have shown the need for the surgery sooner? We will never know. The nerves degenerated and the insurance company is claiming they would have done that anyway and the doctors could only testify saying we will never know now. The state said the claimant had to prove the insurance company willfully wanted to harm him! What kind of horsepoopy is that? He can't sue an insurance company for negligence! The jury ended up being hung and he is a quadrapalegic forever. My brother is an engineer for a company that builds hazardous waste dump sites (the really bad stuff). He is constantly fighting with accountants who cut steps from his procedures to maintain safety. He once had to blow the wistle on a company that was not washing the trucks off on their way out of the site and dragging the waste back out into the community to "save money". Another time they wanted to change sites to a parcel that could be bought cheaper but was not stable for a dump site. My brother refused and they found another engineer to sign off on the project. That site shifted as my brother said it would and now the town has this stuff rolling in. Yea, this country is on the right track with bean counters telling the world how to run. Mikey
That's not necessarily true the way I see it. They are only shifting the payroll cost somewhere else even if the restaurant lets someone go. In the printing industry it was common to outsource orders for business cards for example to companies that specialize in doing them. Maybe it still is with some printers. (They are such a pain in the *$$! But a necessary evil.) The thing was, you were already paying to have a press operator on staff, and instead of using the labor cost you already were incurring to print the cards, you were now paying even more to produce a card because you now added the additional cost of paying a vendor along with the wages of the press operator, who may have gotten caught up with the work they did have and was now pushing a broom for lack of work. Even with a 100% mark up to the customer, it was proven that a company would still lose money by outsourcing jobs that could be done in-house. I think it is all a shell game.
That's another part I don't understand. How does it save money? The call takers aren't working for free and there has to be someone available during business hours. Not to mention the cost of the hardware and technology (I bet it's a lot more than a couple microphones and speakers) that allow them to do this. Oh, well. I guess things like this are why I was destined to be a blue collar, good ol' boy.ou:
like i said before...if you have one person doing the job of several on-site employees, there is a major cost savings for the company. people who work in call centers are far less likely to injure themselves than someone working around hot, splattering grease. i am sure this affects a company's comp rate. couple that with the fact that in some situations, a person sitting in front of a computer screen...either in their home or in a call center, may not even qualify for such regulated benefits as insurance or unemployment [another major expense for the company], and it will only be an advantage for the "bottom line". what i don't understand is, if we all lose our jobs to this downsizing and streamlining in the name of cost effectiveness, who is gong to have the money to spend in these business?:spank:
