Forget Artificial Intelligence – Some resto operators have hit on a new way to save money. They’re using ‘Imported Intelligence’ to staff their cash registers. And it all sounds eerily like a customer service debacle of yesteryear…
Customer (sitting and texting, left) waits for their order to appear in
window (right). ZOOM cashier waits patiently at the checkout…
Remember, back in the 90s, when many companies were using the global, satellite-enabled tele-phone system to set up customer service call centres in foreign lands? The lure of much lower wage expectations and potential employees who could speak English was overwhelming. Good idea, bad outcome…
Safe and secure…
It’s a great idea for the cashiers. No worries about personal safety or having to balance the register at the end of your shift. The cashier is 8,354 mi. / 13,366 km away, in the Phillipines. And the ‘register’ is a self-checkout-type pay station.
You interact via ZOOM with a face on a flatscreen. I guess that’s better than an AI-driven robot that might break down trying to handle the slightest deviation from the official menu. But it’s not a sit-uation I want to deal with. I’ve done it before, and it was infuriating.
… But fundamentally flawed
Even if the ‘remote’ cashier was right in front of me, in person, I’d have problems dealing with her. But I want to make it clear, my personal issues are apart from and in addition to the basic systemic factors I see as drawbacks to the ZOOM cashier concept.
Case in point
Back in the late 1990s, I was in the habit of visiting my mom, in my birth-town just west of Toronto, once a month or so. The 4-hour drive each way was worth the effort if I made it a three-day weekend.
I’d stop at the McDonald’s a few blocks from her place, before ‘checking in’, to grab a quick snack and freshen up. The only problem was, the counter staff were all recent arrivals from the Phillipines. They were all young women. And they had no concept of North American manners, customs or work ethics.
I remember standing there while 4 of them ignored me, chattering away in some pidgin mix of English and Tagalog only they understood. And when they did deign to acknowledge me, they had a lot of trouble understanding my order, enunciated in perfect, proper English. But they didn’t seem to care. It was like a game to them. They had no concept whatsoever of what they were supposed to be doing, or how to serve a customer.
Money talks
At the time, importing offshore labour was seen as a cheap, convenient way to save on operating costs. Until customer discontent over experiences like mine became deafening.
And all of a sudden, Fast Food operators were hiring enthusiastic, well-oriented local kids again.
Not just them
The real outcry against employing cheap foreign labour for tasks that could be handled remotely came around the same time, in another industry. When major tech companies, which faced huge costs maintaining customer service call centres, decided to go ‘off-shore’.
Is there anyone out there who hasn’t had at least one infuriating experience trying to get a problem solved, talking on an iffy phone connection to someone speaking heavily-accented English from a sweat shop in Mumbai?
Just as the Fast Food sector pulled back, so the tech sector finally abandoned cheap foreign labour.
Déjà vu all over again
Now, a new generation of tech-savvy resto operators is trying a blend of the imported labour and off-shore call centre concepts, to save costs on counter staffing. I’m betting they’re Millennials or GenXs who never experienced the 90’s as adults.
My take
Why, I hear you ask, don’t they just use order/pay kiosks (see photo, top of page) like most of the Fast Food outlets have already installed? Maybe, as operators of eateries a step up from Fast Food, they still care enough about their customers to greet them with a face. Of sorts.
Be that as it may… I predict the so-called ‘revolutionary’ idea of ZOOM cashiers will quickly go the way of its predecessors. Even with the instantaneous communications afforded by broadband Internet and all the other tech magic that’s been developed in the past couple of decades…
~ Maggie J.