Sunday, October 12, 2008
Negatives of Call Centers
I try to avoid fast food like the plague as often as possible, but the other night I found myself pressed for time and driving though a McDonald’s. While I was waiting for my food, I actually mentioned the article we read in class to the person I was ordering with. While its true that there are possible gains from the call-centers in terms of increasing accuracy, decreasing order time, and ultimately increasing bottom line profit, these aren’t the issues I brought up to my friend. Instead, I first explained how we could be talking to someone all the way in Hawaii or anywhere else in the world. I told him that they sit in call centers and take thousands of orders a day from a computer screen. He mentioned that the other day he could barely understand the person who took his order at Taco Bell, and he said that maybe a call center would have fixed the problem. I agreed with him, but I then went on to tell him that these young people work for minimum wage with barely a break for the entire day, and that they were expected to be completely on task for the entirety of their shift. I told him that every call was monitored and that each employee was expected to respond to red boxes on their computer screen by clicking within milliseconds to ensure efficiency. Is it worth degrading these workers to something barely better than machines to maybe increase profit? In that light, with these companies spending so much money on increasing efficiency, why not work to develop a technology that allows orders to be taken by computer rather than by a minimum wage worker? While there might be complications with ensuring accuracy, it would almost certainly decrease costs by more than hiring hundreds of thousands of minimum wage employees worldwide. There has to be a better use for those workers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I agree with your friend in that a call center could fix the problem of being unable to understand the accents of workers behind drive-thru speakers. As I mentioned in my own blog, the call centers could hire workers only with distinct and clear English. This would solve many language barrier problems and make the whole process of ordering food in a drive-thru line run much smoother than it normally does. I personally am a fan of the system of checking on the workers by having them responding to on-screen boxes. I think it is an efficient way to make sure they are on task and disagree with your point that this degrades the workers. I think that it is a good thing for all companies to have a system of ensuring worker reliability. On another note, I really like how you talk about the option of working on technology to take orders by computer rather than improving the actual order taking by humans. This seems very reasonable and practical because, as you mention, "there has to be a better use for those workers."
Sasha, thanks for your response and I actually had read your comment on the call centers earlier. I think there are two sides to every story, and while there is definitely a benefit here, I think there is also an equally great drawback. It is hard to say that the job degrades workers as these workers are all voluntarily hired and no one is forcing them to take the job, but I believe that reducing worker autonomy to an almost negligible level pins them in a hole that is hard to advance out of. As far as I know, workers who take orders in a restaurant are observed and promoted by the store managers if they exceed expectations. In these call centers, the workers are held to such high expectations with such little room for error, that if they do their jobs perfectly, they go unnoticed. On the other hand, if workers fail to click a button, they are at the very least considered off-task. I think that companies like McDonald’s that are so influential worldwide and pride themselves on promoting from within and valuing their workers should at least give their workers a chance.
While I may not avoid fast food as much as you do Kyle, I certainly agree with you on the superfluous nature of these call centers. It seems like the addition of these call centers may be able to make a couple fractions of a percent more profit than doing things the "old fashion" way, but it also seems to be adding another electronic tether that could easily malfunction. As much as the Mickey D's worker said that the call center could have eliminated that static at Taco Bell (gross btw) my thoughts behind a call center is that it would be MORE likely to add in static or miss-understandings. Besides, who is going to believe that you actually ordered a cheeseburger with no tomatoes and not cheesy fries with extra jalapeños? I mean what's next, a touch screen at the drive through window similar to the screens down at the barbeque joint at towers? I'm sure I'm not the only one that despises the stupid system of ordering down there next to Quizznos, again it seems like more and more is eventually being pushed on the consumer. Can we please just let the high school student/dropout make 6 bucks an hour with some breaks?
Post a Comment