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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

> being people, in the service area is 80% of the job

> Even fast food chains

Those are also jobs for which, for many customers, replacing people with automation would provide strictly better service. Ignoring the actual preparation and serving of food for the moment, an automated interface for ordering (as in "push button for what you want, pay, order shows up in the kitchen with a number") would make fewer mistakes, move customers through quicker, and cost less.

That doesn't mean automation could easily replace things that require (for instance) precise physical manipulation; it doesn't seem nearly as likely that automation could go around refilling beverages in a restaurant any time soon, and if it could, it'd cost far more than a human would. But taking orders, sending them to the kitchen, and processing payment? Automation would provide strictly better service there.

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McDonalds, KFC etc who invest millions in researching process improvements, beg to differ on the strictly better service.

Part of that is down to the fact the person that takes your order also helps clean when not busy, smiles at your kid, ejects unruly customers and upsells to supersize more persuasively than a flashing red box (which was a large part of my original point)

But part of that is also down to the fact that the average person is really bad at using a human-machine interface (and that ain't gonna be improved in a busy commercial environment by voice-recognition technology any time soon)

I mean, I see a lot more automated kiosks in supermarkets than I used to. Usually I use them in preference to human kiosks. Many other people have precisely the opposite preference, and they have money to spend too. Overall, the kiosks increase the throughput of the store, but that's because there are more of them due to their smaller footprint than the checkout counters they replace. In the hands of the average person trying to use the system they're certainly not more efficient than a competent checkout operative, and require a human for every few machines to deal with their idiosyncrasies and frequent failings, and manage the queue.

And the automats, which are a far better human/machine interface than some talking touch screen connected to the kitchen because you literally see the freshly-made fast food, put money in the slot and open to receive it? They've been around for a century now, long before Ray Kroc and Colonel Sanders got into the industry, and they've repeatedly failed.

McDonalds specifically is starting to replace its cashiers with kiosks, though right now it looks like the former cashiers are switching to bussing tables instead.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/18/mcdonalds-kiosks-table-service...

> an automated interface for ordering (as in "push button for what you want, pay, order shows up in the kitchen with a number") would make fewer mistakes, move customers through quicker, and cost less.

Having sat behind people trying to figure out how to exit automated parking garages on multiple occasions, I'm not convinced this would move people through any quicker. Also, what happens when the button wears out or malfunctions? Are the line cooks also skilled in IT diagnostics or do you just begin hemorrhaging cash till a tech comes out? I've seen skeleton crews continue to make money even through complete power outages.

>Also, what happens when the button wears out or malfunctions?

You have multiple buttons, and have marginally longer lines until someone can come to fix it. Or if that would cost you too much in sales, you have a regular maintenance schedule that reduces the chance of failure to acceptable levels. (And still involves far less labour than paying for a cashier all day.)

> an automated interface for ordering [...] would

Would? It already does, at least for a few well know fast food chains in my country. Just a couple of days ago I used one of those kiosks for ordering and paying.

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