Why Customer Experience (CX) monitoring should be at the top of every Franchisor’s to do list in January

CX is arguably the biggest differentiator, or battleground, between businesses right now. Every business needs a well-considered and executed customer experience strategy, to deliver more business, repeat business and a positive brand reputation. But when it comes to the franchise sector, it’s vital to not only implement, but continuously monitor your CX strategy. 

You’re only as successful as your weakest performing franchisee

By the very nature of a franchised business model, you, the franchisor, are one step removed from delivering your brand to the end customer. That can have negative consequences for your whole company if poor CX goes undetected.  

By measuring the CX that your franchisees are delivering on a monthly basis, you not only get a real time picture of how the brand is being received overall, but also an indication of any potential problems within your network. 

At the very worst end of the scale, you could uncover a franchisee treating customers terribly – if they hadn’t already made a complaint – but generally, you could discover things customers may not have noticed, but weaken the experience that you had designed. For example, missed processes, failing to follow up or a lack of personalisation may need addressing individually, or across your network.

CX monitoring isn’t about franchisee bashing

The very opposite in fact. It’s about assessing what works well and uncovering new ideas that can be shared across the network. Because the most successful franchises are the ones that operate in an open, honest, collaborative, and supportive way – and you get this through monitoring and feedback. 

Putting CX at the heart of the business and measuring against KPI’s should always have positive intentions. Yes, it can create a bit of competitive spirit amongst franchisees, but it should also create positive conversations where someone may seek out help or advice. 

Franchised businesses must take a 360 degree approach to monitoring CX.

CX in the traditional sense (franchisee to end customer), is only one element at play here. A franchise network also needs to monitor the experience a franchisee receives from other franchisees and from the franchisor. 

For your franchisees to deliver a superior customer experience, they must receive the right tools, information, and support – and it must be delivered in a way that works for them, not you. By asking for regular feedback from your network you can quickly get a better understanding of where you may need to provide extra resources or training, or where you may need to improve your communication style or timings. 

It’s not just a tick-box exercise.

Once you’ve monitored it’s vital that you do something with the results. Too many times we see businesses collect insight and then don’t take any action to improve the experience and the scores before they repeat the same research 12 months later. 

Monitoring every 12 or six months is also not good enough, you need to be monitoring on a monthly basis to get the best impetus and improvement. This helps improve the CX culture.

Ultimately, knowledge is power. 

If you as the franchisor understand the quality of service that is being delivered by your franchisees, you have the ability to make changes. If you are giving your franchisees the opportunity to give you feedback on the quality of service they are receiving, you are able to make changes. It fosters a transparent working relationship that results in a better experience for all.  

 

Jonathan Winchester is a customer experience entrepreneur, franchisor, speaker and business leader. He is the Founder and Chief Executive of insight6. insight6 is a franchise. For more information on how to improve your customer experience, visit www.insight6.com. Request to connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn.