I was walking down the street with a friend (I stay vague on purpose). Noon, so we were hungry. We come to a fast food. They specialize in chicken… from that old general. We enter the place. The place is packed. I think I already said it was noon. We decide (my friend and I) that I should be the one delving in that sea of bodies and arms reaching for the counter. Behind the counter 4 cashiers. Uh… ok,  so now I just have to get to one of the cashier , order and get a slip (or ticket, or whatever they call it here). So I manage to get in front of one of the cashier. He isn’t looking at me. I tell myself that he will as soon as he can. One minute, two minute. Nothing. I’m being pushed in the back. People are hungry. That woman behind me. She is slowly but surely attempting to pass me to the left. I feel her more than I see her moving. One step at a time. Like she is telling herself “not too fast, otherwise he might see me”. What does she think she is doing? I try to catch the cashier’s eyes. Wait a minute, is he purposely avoiding to look at me? It looks like it. The woman succeeds. She is on my left now, at the counter. She hands her money to the cashier who seems to suddenly come to life.

” Mam,…uh it looks like I was here before you.”

“Well, I thought you had a already ordered and were waiting to be served now”.

No no miss, I’m just invisible.  By then I’m just fed up. I have to let my friend know that I rather go and have something else, somewhere else. Not far from the chicken joint, what do we find?

Two Chicken .

Surprise, another chicken place. Here the atmosphere is more exotic: African deco… Almost nobody in sight. I go straight to the counter. Place my order. Three ” 1/4 chicken and rice” of which one take-away.  We are shown to our table. We even get a slip with our order number on it. Let’s pass the lunch details. We eat. It’s good. We are positively surprised as it is not that expensive actually. Ok, time to go. I go to the counter so I can get the take-away. Hum… well they forgot about it. One of the waiters  even has to confirm that I did order a take-away. So that was the catch… It  was just too good to be true. We wait some more till the order is ready.

Both of the fast foods I went to are franchises. There are supposed to give great care to such things as business processes. The service delivery in such entreprises is something planned for, and not a mere lucky occurence. Yet in the first one I visited, the customers had to litteraly compete with one another in order just to get noticed by the cashiers. Really, how difficult is it to set a queue management system? Espescially when we know that the customers experience of a service is directly influenced by the presence of other customers (check Service Marketing Theory  or Servuction for the french speaking)?  In my case the influence was terrible. Business processes when well thought should always have  one sole goal: the customer’s satisfaction. Everything else stems from it, we would agree. That is the only reason to be in business.  We are error-prone  beings, so I would suggest using workflow systems to remind our lovely cooks (and cashiers and whoever is in the business of serving) of  their duties. Actually,  when leaving the choice to the service provider to follow or not the processes, we are exposing ourselves to the same problems (“ we forgot…”). No, what would be even better would be to let the customer punch in (through any suitable interface) his\her requirements ( in my case three chicken and rice!). Then the workflow system (or simply here an order system) forces the service provider to step through and comply with each steps necesserary to complete the task at hand (here to cook my chicken!)

I heard that one of these “chicken” franchises was changing vendors for it’s Information System. Going from a Linux to a Windows based solution so that managers can better aggregate and share information. They are talking of  a “Knowledge Base”. Cool… Well they could also spend some of that money (it won’t be much) getting their basics right. The client is the base of it all.