Every Bit You Make

What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was
not
just outside Ms. Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast.
She
was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms.
Vargas had
also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and
Gillette, Wyo.

Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this
town,
150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders
remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are
then
sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from
where they were placed.

The people behind this setup expect it to save just a few seconds on
each
order. But that can add up to extra sales over the course of a busy day
at
the drive-through.

While the call-center idea has received some attention since a
scattered
sampling of McDonald's franchises began testing it 18 months ago, most
customers are still in the dark. For Meredith Mejia, a regular at a
McDonald's in Pleasant Hill, Calif., near San Francisco, it meant that
her
lunch came with a small helping of the surreal. When told that she had
just
ordered her double cheeseburger and small fries from a call center 250
miles
away, she said the concept was "bizarre."

And the order-taking is not always seamless. Often customers' voices
are
faint, forcing the workers to ask for things to be repeated. During
recent
rainstorms in Hawaii, it was particularly hard to hear orders from
there
over the din.

Ms. Vargas seems unfazed by her job, even though it involves being
subjected
to constant electronic scrutiny. Software tracks her productivity and
speed,
and every so often a red box pops up on her screen to test whether she
is
paying attention. She is expected to click on it within 1.75 seconds.
In the
break room, a computer screen lets employees know just how many minutes
have
elapsed since they left their workstations.

The pay may be the same, but this is a long way from flipping burgers.

"Their job is to be fast on the mouse � that's their job," said Douglas
King, chief executive of Bronco Communications, which operates the call
center.

The center in Santa Maria has been in operation for 18 months; a
print-out
tacked to a wall declares, "Over 2,540,000 served." McDonald's says it
is
still experimental, but it puts an unusual twist on an idea that is
gaining
traction: taking advantage of ever-cheaper communications technology,
companies are creating centralized staffs of specially trained
order-takers,
even for situations where old-fashioned physical proximity has been the
norm.

The goals of such centers are not just to cut labor costs but also to
provide more focused customer service � improving the level of personal
attention by sending Happy Meal orders on a thousand-mile round trip.

"It's really centralizing the function of not only taking the order but
advising the customer on getting more out of the product, which can
sell
more � at least in theory," said Joseph Fleischer, chief technical
editor
for Call Center Magazine, an industry trade publication.

McDonald's is joined by the owner of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., CKE
Restaurants, which plans to deploy a similar system later this year in
restaurants in California.

Not everyone is sold on the idea. Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's
Restaurants, said that the approach had not yet proved itself to be
cost-effective. "Speed is incredibly important," he said, but "we
haven't
given this solution any serious thought."

Mr. Lynch said that Wendy's would need concrete evidence that call
centers
worked. For example, could remote order-takers increase sales by asking
customers to order dessert?

Then there is the question of whether combining burgers, shakes and
cyberspace is an example of the drive for efficiency run amok �
introducing
a mouse where the essential technology is a spatula.

"This is a case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' " said Sherri
Daye
Scott, editor of QSR Magazine, a trade journal covering fast-food
outlets,
which refer to themselves as quick-service restaurants.

But the backers of the technology are looking to expand into new
industries.
The operator of one of the McDonald's centers is developing a related
system
that would allow big stores like Home Depot to equip carts with
speakers
that customers could use to contact a call center wirelessly for
shopping
advice.

Jon Anton, a founder of Bronco, says that the goal is "saving seconds
to
make millions," because more efficient service can lead to more sales
and
lower labor costs. With a wireless system in a Home Depot, for example,
a
call-center operator might tell a customer, "You're at Aisle D6. Let me
walk
you over to where you can find the 16-penny nails," Mr. Anton said.

Efficiency is certainly the mantra at the Bronco call center, which has
grown from 15 workers six months ago to 125 today. Its workers are
experts
in the McDonald's menu; they are trained to be polite, to urge
customers to
add items to their order and, above all, to be fast. Each worker takes
up to
95 orders an hour during peak times.

Customers pulling up to the drive-through menu are connected to the
computer
of a call-center employee using Internet calling technology. The first
thing
the McDonald's customer hears is a prerecorded greeting in the voice of
the
employee. The order-takers' screens include the menu and an indication
of
the whether it is time for breakfast or lunch at the local restaurant.
A
"notes" section shows if that restaurant has called in to say that it
is out
of a particular item.

When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick
it
up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During
that
time, Mr. King said, his order-takers can be answering a call from a
different McDonald's where someone has already pulled up.

The remote order-takers at Bronco earn the minimum wage ($6.75 an hour
in
California), do not get health benefits and do not wear uniforms. Ms.
Vargas, who recently finished high school, wore jeans and a baggy white
sweatshirt as she took orders last week.

The call-center system allows employees to be monitored and tracked
much
more closely than would be possible if they were in restaurants. Mr.
King's
computer screen gives him constant updates as to which workers are not
meeting standards. "You've got to measure everything," he said. "When
fractions of seconds count, the environment needs to be controlled."

Speed and sales volume are not the only factors driving remote
order-taking.
CKE Restaurants, for instance, wants to improve customer service. It
plans
to start taking remote orders in September at five Carl's Jr.'s
restaurants
in California, with a broader deployment after that.

CKE said its workers were strained doing numerous tasks at once �
taking
orders, helping to fill them, accepting cash and keeping the
restaurants
clean.

Accuracy problems at the drive-through "are a result of the fact that
the
people working them are multitasking to the point they forget details,"
said
Jeff Chasney, head of technology operations for CKE.

Mr. Chasney said the new system could help lower barriers in language
and
communication. Often, in California in particular, he said, the
employee may
primarily speak Spanish, while the customer speaks only English � a
problem
that can be eliminated with a specialized call-center crew.

"We believe we raise the customer-service bar by having people who are
very
articulate, have a good command of the English language, and some who
are
bilingual," he said.

Some 50 McDonald's franchises are testing remote order-taking, some
using
Bronco Communications. Others are using Verety, a company based in Oak
Brook, Ill. (also the home of McDonald's), that has taken the concept
further by contracting workers in rural North Dakota to take
drive-through
orders from their homes.

A spokesman for McDonald's, Bill Whitman, said that the results of the
test
runs had been positive so far, but that it had not yet decided whether
to
expand its use of the technology.

The system does sometimes lead to mix-ups and customer confusion. The
surprised customer will say to the cashier, "You didn't take my order,"
said
Bertha Aleman, manager of the McDonald's in Pleasant Hill. For the last
seven months the franchise has used the Bronco system to help manage
its two
drive-through lanes at lunch.

Ms. Aleman said that, over all, the system had improved accuracy and
helped
her cut costs. She said that now she did not need an employee dedicated
to
taking orders or, during the lunch rush, an assistant for the
order-taker to
handle cash when things backed up. "We've cut labor," she said.

The call-center workers do have some advantages over their on-the-scene
counterparts. Ms. Vargas said it was strange to be so far from the
actual
food. But after work, she said, "I don't smell like hamburgers."

NY Time Article