April 21, 2008

Going From Corporate to Non-Profit

I'm sure we've got at least a few readers out there who are in the corporate world and thinking of dabbling in the realm of churches. If you're thinking of leaving a job with a profit-making company to one with a nonprofit, there are some issues you need to concern yourself with.

The New York Times writes in a question and answer article "Your True Calling Could Suit a Nonprofit":

Q. What are the biggest misconceptions about switching from the corporate world to the nonprofit world?

A. Many people are surprised to find the hours longer and stress greater than in the corporate world. Brian Olson, who left the private sector for a nonprofit in 2006, found the decision-making process to be unfocused.

“No matter how good a volunteer board is, it’s not the same as a corporate board, because everyone has a different agenda,” said Mr. Olson, who returned to the private sector a year later to be vice president for public affairs at Video Professor Inc., a company in Lakewood, Colo., that sells self-tutorial programs. “There was a purity to corporate life I missed,” he said.

Continue reading "Going From Corporate to Non-Profit"

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December 10, 2007

Marketing Waste: When To Stop

by Tim Wall, Guest Blogger

This is part 4 of a 4 part series on using your marketing budget effectively. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of Tim’s money-saving advice.

We’ve begun to looking at ways to stop wasting money on marketing. Step one taught us to "Establish a measurable indicator for every marketing effort." Step two taught us to “Run a small marketing effort to determine your cost per conversion.”

Step 3: Know when to stop.

One common way churches waste money on marketing is by believing that a successful marketing effort will continue to be successful forever. Knowing and continually tracking your cost per conversion (see step two) will help you avoid this costly mistake.

Continue reading "Marketing Waste: When To Stop"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:27 AM
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December 7, 2007

Marketing Waste: Cost per Conversion

by Tim Wall, Guest Blogger

This is part 3 of a 4 part series on using your marketing budget effectively. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of Tim’s money-saving advice.

We’ve begun to looking at ways to stop wasting money on marketing. Step one taught us to "Establish a measurable indicator for every marketing effort."

Step 2: Run a small marketing effort to determine your cost per conversion.

Before you launch into a full-blown campaign, test run your effort to see if it is effective. With your indicator, or goal, clearly established and your tracking measures in place (see step one), you can now determine your cost per conversion.

A conversion, in the marketing sense, is not someone coming to faith in Christ. Rather, it is simply one completion of your goal (remember step one when I told you this wouldn't seem very spiritual?). Your cost per conversion is the amount of money you spend divided by the number of conversions you achieve.

Continue reading "Marketing Waste: Cost per Conversion"

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December 5, 2007

Marketing Waste: Measuring Success

by Tim Wall, Guest Blogger

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on using your marketing budget effectively. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of Tim’s money-saving advice.

We established last time that avoiding wasted money in marketing hinges on measuring results. So, how do we do that in a church? Well, I've put together a simple, three step process to help you.

Step 1: Establish a measurable indicator for every marketing effort.

What will you watch to see if your marketing effort is successful? If you can't answer that question, stop right now before it's too late!

Measurable indicators, or goals, should be specific so that you can tell if you really meet them. For example, you might send out a direct mail piece to your community and then watch your worship attendance the next Sunday to see if it goes up. Well, that's an indicator, but it's not terribly specific. A lot of things might influence your worship attendance, so how do you really know if your marketing helped?

Continue reading "Marketing Waste: Measuring Success"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 8:19 AM
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December 3, 2007

Stop Wasting Money On Marketing

by Tim Wall, Guest Blogger

This is part 1 of a 4 part series on using your marketing budget effectively.

Whoa, hey now! I thought this blog was all about marketing. What's with the title?

Notice I didn't say, "Stop spending money on marketing." I said, "Stop wasting money."

Here's the deal. It's really, really easy for churches to waste money. In fact, I think it's much easier for churches than for comparably-sized businesses. That's because businesses have a bottom line--making money. It's easy to tell if you're making money, and it's easy to tell if the money you spend is helping or hurting. But churches don't really have a bottom line that can be easily measured, and measuring is the key to not wasting money.

So, if you're not measuring the results of your marketing efforts, then you are wasting money; but you can change. In my eight years of full-time church communications work and my current work marketing our company's content management system, Light, I've wasted a lot of money on marketing. And I’ve learned from my mistakes. So, based on my experience, I've put together a simple, three-step process to help you. We’ll continue with three more posts describing this process. Stay tuned.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:33 AM
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November 27, 2007

Lessons In Not Sucking: Working With Firms & Freelancers

This is part eight in a series on Lessons In Not Sucking. Today we discuss working with freelancers and firms. Having both owned my own creative firm in the past that worked with churches and now being on the other side of the table working with and hiring freelancers, I've learned a few things here and there. As always, if you have additional comments to add to this, fire away!

1. Architect vs. Contractors.
It's important to know the difference between architects and contractors when it comes to getting your project done. Architects are the ones who create and plan, contractors are the ones who execute. Many freelancers and firms attempt to do both and, in many cases, it can work out due to the size of a project. However, make sure you know what you're asking for when it comes to your project. If you're acting as the architect, make sure the freelancer or firm you're hiring knows that their role is to make your plans happen. Too many architects is like too many cooks in the kitchen. No architects is like a plan with no vision.

2. Build the relationship.
The more you know your freelancers and firms, the better they will be able to understand you! And the more they understand you, the better your projects will get. Don't be afraid to tour their studio or do coffee together. Invite them to a service, let them come to a staff meeting. You already know the value of relationship, so extend it to them too.

3. Freebies ain't free.
I strongly suggest you stay away from the freelancer or firm who offers to do your project for free. This is especially difficult when you're using someone that goes to your church because they really want to help. By the way, I'm not always a fan of using people from the inside--it depends on the size of your church. Free stuff is never really free. It always costs something. Headache, hassle, hoops, etc.

Continue reading "Lessons In Not Sucking: Working With Firms & Freelancers"

Posted by Brad Abare at 5:38 PM
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November 20, 2007

Lessons In Not Sucking: Working With Volunteers

This is part seven in a series on Lessons In Not Sucking. Today we discuss working with volunteers. Love 'em or hate 'em, volunteers are here to stay. And here's to hoping they make your day, not take your day.

1. Match strengths, not availability.
Just because someone says they're available to help out doesn't mean that will actually result in someone helping you out. So what if they know how to use Photoshop, do they know how to use it in a way that results in stuff you are expecting? Always look to match the strengths of a volunteer, not the availability of a volunteer.

2. Remember reciprocity.
Volunteers are volunteering because they get something in return. It may sound selfish, but it's just the way we're wired. Whether it be satisfaction, a free meal, kudos, recognition, promotion or just plain smiles, the concept of reciprocity is alive and well. Don't forget this because when you know what the volunteer is looking for, you can better help them to obtain it.

3. Realistic expectations.
Be realistic when it comes to the expectations you have for volunteers. Expect too little and you'll never cause them to rise to the challenge. Expect too much and they'll feel like they failed you. Communicate up front what you're expecting and give them opportunity to respond.

Continue reading "Lessons In Not Sucking: Working With Volunteers"

Posted by Brad Abare at 7:37 AM
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September 12, 2007

Franchising Church

We're living in modern times. Everything is outsourced, and everything is franchised. Why should church be any different?

Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight discusses this model of church planting where a larger church will directly partner with a new church plant.

Of course, every instance of this is different, but with a North Point plant franchise in my own town, and with friends working there, this is what I see.

Continue reading "Franchising Church"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 11:36 AM
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July 10, 2007

Oops: Mistakes in Church Leadership

Craig Groeschel is sharing four mistakes he's made at LifeChurch.tv. I think it's always helpful when people share their mistakes so you can learn from them and hopefully not make the same ones.

1. It's not your ministry.
2. Let people go.
3. Don't build small.
4. Don't be stingy.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 12:31 PM
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July 2, 2007

Mad Church Disease Awareness

The good thing about Church Marketing Sucks is that we're people. People have friends. Thus, we have friends. Anne Jackson comes out of this simple logic. She's written for us before, and she likes to hang around and help church marketing not suck. We're pretty proud to know her.

She's got a new project she's working on called Mad Church Disease. It's about the epidemic of burnout among church staff and volunteers. Church marketing and communication sucks when it burns out your staff, so this is an important issue to consider. I sat down (virtually, via e-mail) with Anne to get the proper diagnosis.

Continue reading "Mad Church Disease Awareness"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:57 AM
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April 25, 2007

9 Ways to Use Google Apps in your Church Marketing

In the computer world, there's three things I'm crazy for. Macs, Quicksilver, and Google. (No, it's not just search.) Macs aren't so much church marketing related (except, of course, that they're better than PCs), and Quicksilver definitely isn't church marketing related. Google, I would argue, is. A little over a week ago, we asked you, and 12% of you said Google was essential to your church marketing efforts.

This is for the other 88%. Nine ways to use Google Apps in your church marketing.

Continue reading "9 Ways to Use Google Apps in your Church Marketing"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 6:05 AM
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February 5, 2007

Visitors, Beer and Sex--Oh My!

Yet again the links have piled up around me faster than I can blog them, so it's time to blow the dam and just let you have them. Here we go...

• The Visitor's Card - The most potentially interesting of the new Outreach Magazine blogs, it's written by a non-Christian describing her experiences visiting church (via Dan Ohlerking)
• Beer and the Bible - Interesting news article about a church outreach that unfortunately draws too much attention to the alcohol. The pastor of the church in question offers some explanation in a comment on this blog post (via Brenton Balvin).
• Does Size Matter? - Swerve, the new blog from lifechurch.tv, has an interesting series on church size.
• My Dad Went to Church. Yay! - A video of a son taking his dad to church for the first time in 20 years--this is what it's all about. It's also so raw and quirky that it almost seems made up, but that's just the Internet hoaxist in me. (via Tony Morgan)

Don't worry, there's much, much more after the jump ...

Continue reading "Visitors, Beer and Sex--Oh My!"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 4:29 PM
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January 12, 2007

Church Staff Free Agents

Ooh, ooh, did you hear the news? Forget about that Beckham guy, Tony Morgan, former pastor at Granger Community Church in Granger, Ind. and one of the Simply Strategic guys is moving on to New Spring Church in Anderson, S.C., pastored by Perry Noble.

And if that's not enough, Terry Storch, former big name blogger and author of some book on the subject (huh--how do you write a book on blogging but then stop blogging?!) is transitioning from Ed Young's Fellowship Church in Dallas to Craig Groeschel's LifeChurch.tv in Oklahoma.

Whew.

Is it me, or does this sound like some kind of pro sports offseason when players are traded and swapped like, well, like baseball cards? You've got the big name managers bringing in the top talent for their teams. Congratulations on the new gigs, guys, we hope they're great opportunities. I'm glad to see church staffs pursuing the top talent, I just never thought church staff changes would be such intriguing news.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:15 AM
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November 6, 2006

The Money-Back Guaranteed Tithe

Here's something different. LifeChurch.tv, the church with locations in Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona and online is offering a three-month tithing challenge. Give for three months. If God doesn't deliver on his promise to provide for you, you can ask for your money back. All of it. No questions asked.

Wow. Now there's a potentially divisive approach to tithing.

Continue reading "The Money-Back Guaranteed Tithe"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 5:37 PM
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July 29, 2006

Lessons from a Chuch Plant

Looks like we're not the only ones celebrating two years. Ridge Stone Church in Canton, Ga. just celebrated its two-year anniversary and Pastor Gary Lamb shared his 21 Lessons from Two Years of Church Planting.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 9:58 AM
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June 1, 2006

Money and the Church

Money is always a touchy issue, especially for churches. There can easily be issues, whether actual or perceived. And while actual abuses cause enormous problems, I'd guess it's the perceived issues that are more rampant:

• Accusing a church of mismanaging funds when they actually just disagree with the vision of the church (the 'church buildings/amenities are evil' or the 'too plush' mindset).
• Accusing a church of watering down the message in order to keep the cash rolling in--offering 'Christianity lite' and not touching difficult topics like materialism (the 'megachurches are evil' mindset).
• Accusing a church of talking about money or asking for money too often--which has to be the biggest complaint, no matter how much churches try to downplay the offering.

An article about how churches use money (registration required) touches on some of these issues, but doesn't bother to dig into some of the real issues. What is interesting is that they report that among non-profits, churches have the most honest financial records.

When it comes to money and church I often hear big time churches and leaders saying it's better to talk more about money, not less (Ed Young, for example). They argue that Jesus talked more about money than he did a lot of things, and that people simply need help dealing with money.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:33 AM
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May 31, 2006

The Ins and Outs of Sponsorship for Churches

by Kristina Hill, Guest Blogger

I was browsing the web site for T.D. Jakes' 2006 MegaFest Conference and noticed something quite interesting: Coca-Cola, Pine-Sol and Clorox have signed on as sponsors of the larger than life event.

On the heels of the blockbuster success of Christian-based projects such as The Passion of The Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia and Joel Osteen's New York Times bestseller Your Best Life Now, is corporate America finally starting to recognize the importance of targeting Christian consumers on an ongoing basis? Are corporate bigwigs grasping the fact that just like regular folks, Christians eat, sleep, go to the movies, clean our homes, purchase cars and engage in other normal activities on a daily basis?

As corporate interest in Christian consumers intensifies, recruiting a corporation to support your next ministry event could result in a win-win opportunity for your ministry and your sponsorship partner. Sponsorships are a great way to offset the costs associated with producing your event, while also providing businesses an opportunity to promote its products/services to an engaged audience.

Sponsorship can also be a way to cloud your message, encourage consumerism or at the very least allow your church to be labeled a sellout, whether or not the description is fair.

Continue reading "The Ins and Outs of Sponsorship for Churches"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 9:43 AM
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May 30, 2006

Pastors Overworked; Numbers Underchecked

Everybody and their brother is linking to a post by Mark Driscoll about how pastors are overworked. Amen. We've said this before and it's definitely true. Driscoll offers some good signs a pastor may be overworked and some potential solutions. Worth the read.

However. The piece also includes a section of some shocking statistics (50% of pastors get divorced, 70% fight depression, 40% have cheated on their spouse, etc.) credited to a presentation by Darrin Patrick who apparently gathered the info from Barna and Focus on the Family. No direct links or specific attribution is given.

Continue reading "Pastors Overworked; Numbers Underchecked"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 1:45 PM
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March 31, 2006

Is Leadership Spiritual?

Christianity Today has an interesting debate between North Point Community Church's Andy Stanley and the author of Good to Great, Jim Collins. Well, it's not so much a debate. Both are interviewed in the April issue of Leadership and some of their comments are pulled together into this teaser thinly disguised as an article. But the comments are still good.

The topic is leadership and whether or not there's a spiritual aspect to it, which is very similar to our continuing discussions on marketing. The article seems to put Stanley and Collins at odds with Stanley saying good leadership is good leadership and Collins saying the church environment has special circumstances that a good business leader may not know. I think both are right.

Continue reading "Is Leadership Spiritual?"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:05 AM
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March 3, 2006

Church Marketing Without Money

Granger Community Church Communications Director Kem Meyer shares eight ways to improve church communications with little or no budget:

• Have conversations. Lots of them.
• Create a style guide.
• Identify your specific audience.
• Document your communication values.
• Outline a strategy.
• Reduce emotional overload.
• Implement an official proofing team and process. (Have we convinced you of the need for proofing yet?)
• Assemble a group of consumer advocates (or secret shoppers).

Kem offers greater detail on each point, including links to complete entries for several points and a few handy downloads.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:24 AM
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February 21, 2006

Church Surveys

A church survey is a great way to get input from your congregation and find out what's working and what's not. Tony Morgan from Granger Community Church (yes, they're the MyLameSexLife.com folks) shares an all-church survey Granger put together. Sometimes it helps to see what others are asking and how they're wording questions.

Surveys can't answer everything, but they can give some insight. I'd also recommend Survey Monkey for online surveys. While an online survey might not work for a church-wide survey since your sample will be heavily high-tech, at least the tallying and nifty graphs are automatic.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:23 AM
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November 14, 2005

Church Business Applied to the Airline Industry

Perry Noble, pastor of New Spring Church in Anderson, S.C. has an interesting blog entry imagining what would happen if church business practices were applied to the airline industry.

It's funny stuff. Sad, but funny.

I'm not sure if there are any easy answers to church business. It seems like there are dangers on every side. But it is kind of funny to look at how we do things from a different perspective.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 10:54 AM
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November 2, 2005

Is Your Church a Safe Church?

The DesMoines Register covered church security this weekend, a topic that usually doesn't get a lot of attention. Some of those church safety precautions include:

• Training and screening church leaders and volunteers.
• Issuing ID cards for parents that are required in order to pick up their kids from children's ministry programs.
• Installing security cameras.
• Monitoring sex offenders.

Making churches safe should be a no-brainer, especially after the spat of Catholic sexual abuse cases. According to the article, there are more sexual abuse incidents in Protestant churches than Catholic churches. And in the last 10 years churches have averaged 70 child abuse allegations per week.

Continue reading "Is Your Church a Safe Church?"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 10:35 AM
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October 28, 2005

Anglican Newspaper Banned

Maybe I have an anti-establishment streak, but when an upstart conservative paper is banned by the church, I have to laugh. The Anglican Journal is the official newspaper of the Anglican Church in Canada, but many conservatives have felt the paper is too liberal. Earlier this year they responded by publishing The Anglican Planet to offer a more conservative voice within the Anglican church on issues like same-sex marriage.

The response has been more than they expected: 5,000 subscriptions instead of a few hundred, and censorship.

Continue reading "Anglican Newspaper Banned"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:59 AM
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October 25, 2005

Starbucks and Rick Warren

USA Today has a great article about the recent Rick Warren Starbucks cup story, in addition to several other mainstream companies that incorporate some sort of God-factor into their marketing and business model.

Warren's quote on the Starbucks cup comes from his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, and certainly doesn't hold back:

You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny.

What would it look like if your church facilitated a conversation among business leaders and owners, and thought of ways to incorporate God-oriented messages in their marketing?

Continue reading "Starbucks and Rick Warren"

Posted by Brad Abare at 9:39 AM
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October 8, 2005

Performance-Based Salaries for Pastors

I seem to be on a Mark Oestreicher roll this week (actually, I've just been catching up on my RSS feeds), but I stumbled across another great entry: Worst Church Idea of the Month Award:

A pastor said to me that he loves to try new things. And the thing he's trying right now that he thinks is such a good idea? [drum roll, please — and brace yourself] He's paying his staff based on how many people, on average, attend the ministries they are in charge of. He grinned as he told me that, for example, one of the pastors has a fairly low monthly salary, because he's new and his particular ministry is average-sized; but if the ministry reaches x-amount on average, his pay will bump to another level, and at xx-amount, to another level, which is a great salary for their area. He said it's a great system because it builds self-motivation in automatically.

Wow. Performance-based salaries for church. Ouch. That hurts on so many levels.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:04 PM
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October 3, 2005

The Smiling Pastor

An entry over at Tony McCollum's Churchwerx talks about the power of a smile. McCollum uses the example of General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

During World War II, Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied forces, made a conscious decision to never allow a photo of himself to be taken unless he was smiling. He reasoned that his fighting men all over the world would see these pictures and he felt that he must exude confidence no matter what. He once said that he was trying to make everyone feel that he understood something they didn’t about the war and that no matter how bad it might seem to his men, their commander must have a plan or something up his sleeve.

McCollum also points to Susan D. Whiting, CEO of Nielsen Media Research, who had this to say about smiles to Fast Company:

When you're the CEO, you've got to get off the elevator each morning with a big smile on your face. No matter what's going on in the company. Everyone looks to you for a temperature reading.

So is there value in presenting a smiling facade?

Continue reading "The Smiling Pastor"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 4:55 PM
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June 2, 2005

U.K. Churches Looking in Parking Lot to Gauge Income

Vicars in the U.K. are being urged to check the cars in the parking lot to get an idea of what their congregations should be dropping in the offering plate. Yikes. I can't help but feel like I'm missing part of the story, or that there's some transatlantic cultural differences I'm not aware of, but yikes. Is it that hard for people to calculate their own tithe? Or to pledge what they're going to give for the year so the church can form a budget? Do we really need to be asking church members to fill out income declaration forms, even if they are anonymous?

Apparently part of the story is "fair share" programs where the richer congregations help out poorer congregations in the same diocese, but it still seems like a lot of intrusive fuss. The church never seems to look good when it comes to money.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:26 PM
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April 29, 2005

Connecting Church Marketers

Last week Brad posted an entry about design and marketing positions in churches and theorized that churches will soon have a Pastoral Director of Design & Marketing. Based on the feedback we're getting, it's starting to happen. Maybe not a specific pastoral role, but churches are definitely hiring designers and creative people.

monkeyboy commented on Brad's entry asking about getting church creative folks together:

"I would think that there might be enough people like myself who are on staff at a church as the Creative Director or a similar category that it might be beneficial to schedule something where we could all get together outside of our areas of ministry and begin to talk through the whole idea of communicating and presenting the gospel through our respective lenses. I know for me that I often feel like an island when it comes to doing what I do and feel there could be some definite benefits to networking with similar people when it comes to resources and such."

Continue reading "Connecting Church Marketers"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:27 AM
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April 19, 2005

Pastoral Director of Design & Marketing

For quite some time now I've been thinking a lot about the future of the church in terms of the makeup of its staff and personnel. More specifically, I'd like to predict two positions that do not exist now, but within the next 5-10 years, will exist in every church of affordable size.

Say hello to the:

• Pastoral Director of Design & Marketing
  
• Pastor of Philosophy & Ethics

The second position is another post for another day (perhaps another blog). The first position is where I focus my attention and begin to get real jazzed about the potential.

It seems I am not alone in my thinking. Kevin posted an interview yesterday with church creative director, Ryan Hartsock, from Four Corners Community Church. On March 8, Micheal Felker made a comment on his blog about a conversation he had with a "ministry buddy" of his. "Mark my words, the next ministry position will be a person with a design degree whose job it is to advertise." I'm sure there are many others who could opine on this topic.

In order to communicate with their communities and capture the eyes and ears of all generations, churches must make this position a priority. The culture is demanding it. In a world that continually seeks to engage and enrage our senses, the church can be the leaders in excellent communication and marketing practices.

Posted by Brad Abare at 7:15 AM
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April 6, 2005

Cut Your Pastor Some Slack

So often when it comes to the church marketing discussion everything falls to the pastor. As much as I want churches to improve their marketing, I also want to be sensitive to the plight of the burned out pastor. I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: Supporting pastors is good for marketing.

Scott Williams offers a good perspective on what pastors face in his post, Why Pastors Quit The Ministry:

we are tired of pretending that we cannot be hurt. people assume ministers are available for their criticism 24/7. people say things to clergy they would not say to their worst enemies. for some reason they feel at liberty to delve into every aspect of clergy life. they have an opinion about everything we do. they believe it is their god-given right to critique your personal life, your professional life, your emotional state, the way you dress, your use of colloquialisms, your kids, your personality, how much you spend on a car, your friendships, how you drive, how much you fart, the list goes on and on. pastors live their life in the limelight. they, therefore, constantly disappoint people. it is hard to disappoint people all the time. as a pastor, and maybe it is just me, i seem to let people down all the time. recently i was at a small group where several complained that i was not their close friend. besides the obvious fact that i do not have enough hours in the day nor the emotional energy to be friends with everyone, let alone friendly, how can you assume i would would want to be your close friend? ministers spend their entire life pretending to like a portion of the population that they really cannot stand.

Whew. Can you feel that rant? So cut your pastor some slack. (link via Jordon Cooper)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:42 PM
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March 12, 2005

Outsourcing the Drive-Thru?

Listening to the news today (I love talk radio), I learn that McDonald's is re-thinking their approach to the drive-thru. Instead of having orders radioed a few feet ahead to the minimum wage communicationally-challenged employee, MickeyDees gurus are thinking about collecting their fast-food requests in a call center located potentially thousands of miles away. The order then gets beamed electronically back to the employee at the window who presumably can read as well as the call center can listen.

After further research, I learn McDonald's says that professionals "with 'very strong communication skills' could help boost order accuracy and ultimately speed up the time it takes customers to get in and out of the drive-thrus."

What's next? Churches offer local counseling services that are powered by call centers in India?

Although I assume churches are intelligent in their approach to what to outsource and what not to outsource, this does bring up a good lesson.

Continue reading "Outsourcing the Drive-Thru?"

Posted by Brad Abare at 12:58 PM
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