“Hi! My name is Apple, can I take your order?” Huh? [looking at the speaker box with confused doggy head tilt] Ok. With a name like Apple you’re either the daughter of hippies…or Filipino. Judging by the accent I’ll go with the latter. Backtrack: Earlier this year I read a blurb in Wired magazine about order taking at drive-thru windows being outsourced overseas and elsewhere.
That is to say, the person on the speaker box is speaking to you from a cubicle in a call center, probably far from where you are. The call center worker simply pushes your order through to the Jack in the Box or McDonalds or wherever, and there you go, “glocal” service.
This summer I noticed this phenomenon appearing here in Charlotte, at Jack in the Box. In fact (according to the 3rd shift manager at JintheB on 51), the entire Southeast division, for the past three months, has been on trial status with a Santa Maria, CA company called Bronco Communications.
I made a few attempts to interview these call center workers via the speaker box. They were a bit tight lipped. Big surprise. Anywho, here’s my experience:
Disclaimer: consumption of Jack in the Box was at the expense of researching this strange twist of technology :)
1 Comment
September 17, 2008 at 11:25 pm
You know damn well you could have just got a $.99 taco and spared your colonics the trouble…lol. Good stuff Michael.