EASY Tips to Create a Seamless Customer Experience From Franchisor to Franchisee

-Amanda Milovich, Marketing Account Manager

Growth in a business is the ultimate goal, especially for franchises. Still, with every new employee, process, department, and location, we often grow in the right places and grow from the wrong places. You advance further and further from the core competencies that made your company successful. These competencies are undoubtedly the foundation of your companies success, so maintaining them is critical to the longevity and further growth of your business. They usually fall into three departments: marketing, sales, and service, which should all be customer-focused. We see this in what we like to call the Flywheel. Hubspot said it best when they kicked the old marketing funnel out and welcomed the Flywheel. Get acquainted with the video below and find out how you can create a seamless customer experience that’s relevant and useful. 

WATCH HERE

Marketing, sales, and service are the three main touchpoints that can make or break your customer’s experience with your brand. As mentioned earlier, the growing pains you feel when success and growth come into play are unavoidable, and they’re particularly prominent in franchises. Those cherished ideals and core values can get lost from franchisor to franchisee due to lack of proximity and gaps in training. 

For instance, if we asked the franchise owner to describe their customer experience in three words, we’d get a clear, concise answer. We can almost guarantee three different adjectives would come from a franchisee employee on the sales team or working at the front desk. This disconnect creates an unavoidable outcome: the customer experience distorts, and dysfunctions begin to occur as a franchise grows. Fear not. Below, we have outlined three essential tips to overcome the stigma that a franchise can’t avoid the decline and demise of the customer experience.

Implementing a Franchise Marketing System

This tip focuses on marketing spoke of the Flywheel. The new age of marketing, which brought us the Flywheel, also brought the notion that franchise marketing needed a reboot. One CMO at the top trickling down messages and assets to each location is not what resonates with the customers, nor is it what they want or need. Customers want to feel confident that any national or local brand’s product is meeting their own unique needs. That’s why a franchise marketing system is so important — you can create a seamless customer experience that’s relevant and useful. 

Social listening comes heavily into play here. Each location needs to identify what is relevant to its local consumers to create content and resources that speak to their unique needs. And the differences stop there. Maintain the brand standards, the voice, the tone, and, most of all, the integrity of the interactions you have with your customers. Whether it is a DM, website chat, or a comment on a social post, the customer experience should be the same from location to location. 

SerenTIPit: Use templates and an escalation plan to ensure no matter where you interact with a customer online, everyone has the same streamlined and pleasant experience. 

No Train No Game: Effective selling and servicing begins and ends with proper and consistent training. First, it is crucial to identify the main touchpoints that create the customer experience and empower those who participate at each junction. Each staff member will affect the customer experience differently, so it is essential to segment training by task and department. One size does not fit all here. 

You want every customer to walk away with feeling those three vital brand adjectives we asked about earlier. In training, set goals, and make sure your team is well-versed in the brand voice, tone, and behavior. Your local team must live, eat, and breathe those feelings to provide every customer with the same memorable experience. 

SerenTIPit: Secret shop your team regularly to ensure the experience your leads and customers are getting on the phone is the experience you expect. Use the notes collected to refine the brand experience until it’s seamless and perfect.