Jack in The Box drive through order travels 11,000 miles

Outsourcing – it’s a sensitive topic and often misunderstood –  there are a myriad of business applications where we can provide call center services both efficiently and competitively. However we provide near-shore services. Our strength is the market in which we operate, namely North America but English speaking markets such as the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand can benefit equally via our inbound and outbound call center services. Being located in Canada positions Miratel to provide the appropriate experience and quality a client in the US or UK would anticipate. Our attention to monitoring overheads, access to a multi-lingual labour pool and exceptional technology and service provisioning enable us to competitively provide clients with a variety of service applications including telephone fundraising, market research survey/interviewing and order taking to name a few.  Identifying where our expertise best matches your business need is something we’ll be happy to explore with you and provide a detailed cost and project analysis as required.

On occasion however, we see examples of customer service outsourcing (offshore) that not only boggle the mind but reflect just how much the cost of telephony has reduced to enable (unexpected) services to be moved offshore. This example is perhaps the most radical I’ve yet to read – at Miratel we understand the importance of accurate data capture, positive results, comprehensive training and  ROI performance (and more) when partnering with our clients but this story is sure to amuse if not make you gasp.

We’ve all driven up to a drive-through window speaker and ordered a sandwich for lunch, popped the car back into drive and move the short distance to pay and collect our meal. Something as mundane as that happens all over North America every hour of every day. Next time you decide to eat at a Jack In The Box in Hawaii you’ll be amazed at just how difference that experience has become.

Jack In The Box – “Welcome to Jack In The Box can I take your order?”

You – “Hi , Yes please can I get a Jumbo Jack Meal with Fries and a Coke?”

Jack In The Box – “That’ll be $6.41 please drive round”

You get to the window and remember all those empty calories in the coke (how about the fries!) so you tell the smiling face at the window, “Can I change that to a Diet Coke?” if the employee looks at you like they’ve never heard your voice or seen your order until that moment the reality is that they haven’t.

Initially given a trial in two franchised locations, Jack In The Box has now rolled out a process for remote order taking for 21 locations in Hawaii. The internet connection from the drive through window routes your voice and meal selection to a customer service agent in the Philippines some 5,500 miles away. The agent will then repeat your request and the order is transferred to the restaurant to get on with building your burger. The hamburger chain claim that the service has provided excellent customer satisfaction results and they are able to handle all drive through orders 24 hours a day. The only exception being when internet connectivity is not functioning properly at which point a ‘local’ employee can override the conversation and step in to complete the order. Jack In The Box also claim faster overall service due to their restaurant staff being more able to focus on preparing the order and making correct change.

It shows how much the prospect of outsourcing is being explored for applications large and small, though the primary reason for this experiment is almost certainly the cost of living in Hawaii. Reducing the number of staff needed when the aggregate cost for living accommodation is some 55% higher than the lower 48 states would suggest finding staff at fast food wages is that much harder in the Pacific island state.

Outsourcing means many different things to different people, does it mean an order for a hamburger needs to take an 11,000 mile round trip?

I said no mustard!