Last night I read an article titled Long-distance journey of a fast-food order (source: News.com). It's really worth reading. In a nutshell it's about McDonald's (and other fast-food joints) creating call center operations in various locations (including Hawaii) for taking drive-through food orders. So when you pull up to the neon menu to make your order and you hear, "How may I help you?" it might not be someone in the building right there...it could be someone anywhere. The remote call center person takes the order and sends it back to the store via the Internet. How cool is that? It's only a test project for McDonald's but they're already seeing value. The order process is a bit more efficient, and each second they shave off an order is of significant value; over the longer-term it means they can process more orders in less time. That equals money, folks. And while they don't say the mission of this project is to cut down significant labor, you know that's around the corner. Why do I need staff in every single restaurant around the clock when I can have a call center employee handle orders for multiple locations? Fewer staff means saving money. That's good business too. And, according to McDonald's they can track their call center people much more accurately than staff at local restaurants (makes sense). So they can track performance, breaks they're taking, etc. When you pee in a call center, somebody knows it...especially when you pee right on the floor in the main room... I can see some obvious glitches or possible glitches with the system - some remote person takes an order and it gets lost in the blackhole of the Internet as it's sent back. I didn't read a ton of details on the technology they're using to support the system. And who knows if customers might backlash when they start to feel like they're not getting that personalized service (I doubt it, but ya never know). Overall though, I think this is a slick idea, some real innovation on the part of someone at McDonald's. Competition in their market is tough, margins are tight, they're trying to squeeze where they can, improve where they can. This is the kind of thinking that all enterprises need to succeed. (Technorati Tags: mcdonald's, hawaii, call centers, fast food)