The death of the customer service apprenticeship

How McDonalds, Woolworths & Coles are killing customer service...and themselves

A scene in one of my favourite movies, The Founder, has Michael Keaton playing the travelling salesman Ray Kroc, walking up to a window counter at the original McDonalds in Des Moine Illinois in 1954 for the first time and ordering his lunch. Within minutes, even seconds, he has been handed his burger and shake. He politely tells the helpfull young man behind the window counter that there is a mistake, “….This is someone else’s order, I only just ordered mine a minute ago…”.?

And there in a nutshell you have the essence of what McDonalds provided before anyone else in the market - fast food.?In Australia, as I am sure it is globally, “Maccas” has become more than just a fast food store, they have become the primary school for customer service.

I would suggest that everyone knows someone who has worked at McDonalds in their teenage years if not into their twenties, and it's remarkable how common it is to hear someone who is successful in their field, talk about their first job at Maccas and how it taught them…….something. They learnt how to be on time, how to follow direction, how to learn a system, and how to deal with a customer. Equally the first time a young boy or girl has ordered something at a counter might often have been at their local McDonalds, with their Mum or Dad standing behind them gently telling them what to say while they tightly held onto a $5 note. “Say thank you”, and the response always came “Your welcome”.

Last weekend I did what millions of parents have done around the world since 1954, I took my 7 year old son to Maccas after his soccer game, they were beaten 3-0, he tried hard, so he deserved a reward (We can discuss later if McDonalds as a reward is a good thing or not). Unfortunately this time around, the experience wasn’t great, in fact it was appalling. A 30 minute wait to get 2 orders of Hotcakes, a coffee and an Orange Juice via the drive thru was our punishment. Obviously there was a problem somewhere in the “System”, but what was really dissapointing was the complete - and I have to re-iterate - the COMPLETE inability of the staff to manage the situation or the customer service aspect.?

I wasn’t rude, and I would never swear at a retail worker, but I made it very clear several times throughout the 30 minute wait that whatever was going on wasn’t acceptable. The three staff, including the young manager I spoke to just didn’t know what to say or do. I simply got “Umm, yeah…it’s slow…” or nothing, just a deer in the headlights look and no words…at all. It felt like they just didn’t know how to talk to a person, a real person asking them a real question. Eventually, after no food had arrived and I was able to finally get out of the queue & the waiting area, park my car and enter the store I had to give the manager the instructions on what to do, “You need to reverse my transaction, so I get my money back, and you need to go outside and talk to the people in the queue and apologise for the delay, and I would suggest you also tell people when they place their order that it’s a 20+ minute delay in getting their food - before they drive into a drive thru lane they can’t escape from. He just looked at me blankly, mumbled something about there being a really bad delay, eventually he looked me in the eye and said “I’m sorry”, but boy that apology was like pulling teeth. ? ? ?

?As we drove away it dawned on me what was happening at McDonalds and the sad realisation of what that meant for our community. This most recent incident was about the third time I had ever had to question the the customer service at Maccas - yeah sure I’d had cold Hotcakes, or a dishevelled hamburger that looked nothing like the menu item, but this was different. This time like the other two times I was seeing a lack of engagement and empathy, even an ability to empathise, from the staff. And then it hit me, this has only ever happened to me since the implementation of the self service kiosks and the slow but steady disapearance of the staff member on the front counter talking to customers. ? ?

Those awkward engagements were often the brand new employee’s first complex job at McDonalds after mastering the art of wiping tables and refilling the straws & napkins, as another team member stood next to them and patiently explained how to greet the customer, acknowledge the order and then put it into the system, finally taking the cash, or more recently the credit card payment. We may not have realised it over those previous decades but what we were watching was an aprenticeship in customer service, completed by tens if not hundreds of thousands of young first time employees around Australia and the globe. In 2024, there is often no one at that counter, and a steadfast refusal by employees only ten feet away to make eye contact with the small crowd hovering, waiting for their number to be called and their bag of food to be left on the counter for collection - not a "thank you" or a "have a nice day" to be heard. ?

Now to be fair, this phenomenon isn’t unique to McDonalds, we’ve seen another foundational first job reduced in number, the checkout operator at Woolies and Coles is now a very rare bird. In 2024 you can enter your local supermarket, do your regular shopping, pay, pack and carry the bags to your car, without any form of engagement with a staff member. Before 2008 this was literally impossible, today its not only possible - it’s a regular ocurrence. I am one of many who would argue it’s actually been an improvement in some aspects to the shopping experience, it’s definitely quicker especillay when you only need a few items, and the shareholders would say it’s driving up their profits (Hooray??). Supermarkets likes Coles and Woolworths are the largest employers in Australia, with a significantly younger workforce than the next biggest employer, the Federal Government, almost 40% of Woolworths workforce are aged 16-24.?

One last bastion of the customer service apprenticeship is also under attack from the economic desire to get rid of customer interaction - Bar Staff & Waiters. Australians are BIG drinkers, and a pretty significant part of our culture is the end of the day or start of the evening engagement with bar staff. “G’day what will you have…” “How’s your day been…?” “Hot enough for ya..?”. This standard repost is being replaced with QR codes superglued to tables. I like to think I know a thing or two about customer engagement, and I often tell people the two places I learnt about customer service and sales was behind a pub bar in the 80’s and ironically also as a Repo Man for GM back in the 90’s….but that’s another story.

?It doesn’t matter how well you are brought up at home, or what school you went, the art of engaging with complete strangers is one that is most often learnt behind a retail counter, like Maccas, in a Bar or with a waiters order book in your hand standing next to a table full of hungry diners in a cafe and restaurant. If we continue to let these critical customer service school rooms & apprenticeships dissapear it is the rest of us & and our society as a whole that will suffer in the long run.?

From a purely commercial aspect though I would sing out to those shareholders I mentioned earlier, are we cooking the goose that laid the golden egg ? If I can order & pay for my groceries, and have them delivered to my house with the same level of customer service - or even higher than I no longer receive at your Supermarket, why do I need to be loyal any longer to Red or Green brands ? Theres at least 2 restaurant/bars I have attended regularly over the years in the city, one that has traditionally featured bar staff in German Beerfest uniforms (You know the one), that I have stopped taking clients to because there is zero service now. You sit, you scan, you order, your food and drinks are later dropped at speed by an overworked waiter literally without a word. I’m not paying $15 a Stein for that.?

Oh and McDonalds…? Sorry I’m done, from now on a post Soccer game reward is whatever I can scrounch at the independant Petrol station on the way home - they still recognise me and ask how my day has been, even if the ice creams are $7 each. ? ?