My beef with Arby’s.

I swung swang swinged stopped by Arby’s on my way to church last night, and hit the drive-thru. A man’s voice greeted me and asked if I’d like to try one of their new blah blah combos. I declined and placed the first part of my order.

And that’s when it happened.

What was an enthusiastic male voice from Iowa suddenly became a tired female voice from the hills of Leicester (pronounced Lester) asking if I wanted anything else.

If they want to use recordings because they can’t find people adept enough to use their happy voices, that’s cool. But at the least they could follow through and have a voice with the same chromosome arrangement. And go ahead and record the same guy/girl asking “would you like anything else?” while you’re at it. The present arrangement only makes it more obvious to the consumer how poor your employees’ people skills are.

There’s no shortcut when quality service is what you are aiming for. Train your employees to actually sound happy, or create a work environment where they actually ARE happy. And lose the recordings. It’s insulting to find out I just answered a question that nobody actually asked.