9/15/2005

A Big Mac from India? What the hell?

When youre watching late night television and you get the sudden urge to order Winsor Pilates or maybe even College Girls Gone Wild 17, you expect to be able to understand the operator taking your order. Unfortunately this isn't always the case. More times than not you will get a lady from India whose accent is heavier than a sack of dirt. It makes me want to just hang up and try to get an American. No offense to any people who have accents, but I just can't understand you. So what am I really getting at here? McDonalds is now trying to outsource their drive-thru ordering process. Next time youre there you might be hearing someone with a New Jersey accent. Kind of a cool idea if as long as you keep it in America. I don't know where they are finding people who are willing to sit at a computer and take McDonalds orders all day long. But I guess someone has to do it, just not me.

2 comments:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Destiny's post for spelling errors.

Um ... last I checked most local drive through order takers sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Someone from India may not be worse.

The problem here is a common one in analysing social science and business data. Suppose that someone in India actually takes your order and you don't notice - would you still complain? Without keeping track of who takes each of your orders, we can't tell whether accent makes a difference. This means it's quite possible that the success rate is actually higher with an Indian and you don't even know it.

Of course, the managers aren't dumb. They wouldn't do this if the bottom line wasn't improved. Having said that, Destiny has a point that accent/language barriers can be a problem that can affect service. This is an example of a negative externality - and managers can make poor decisions if they have trouble measuring the associated costs accurately.

The real way to do tell is with some sort of long term experiment. One product line with domestic call-takers and one with foreign. Then watch how revenue and costs evolve.

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