Make Every Lead Count
Louise Wilson, business manager at Moneypenny, explains the simple ways in which you can protect your growing brand.
As your network widens, how can you ensure your growing empire stays true to your original business intentions? New people bring their own set of ideas and working practices that can compromise the integrity of an expanding business.
Here, we’ll explore easy-to-adopt solutions to complement your other support services and protect your growing brand.
Keep things consistent
One of the challenges faced by franchisors is brand consistency. As more and more franchisees invest in a business and its regional footprint expands. it can become increasingly diflicult to ensure every business partner is operating in the same way.
Whether it’s marketing activity. product specification or customer service, quality in these areas can have a huge effect on your overall reputation. It’s for this reason that implementing standards and benchmarks for franchisees to follow is a worthwhile investment.
Ensure that you have brand guidelines in place, as well as social media policies and template collateral, including press releases and adverts. All franchisees should also be aware of preferred suppliers and undergo thorough training Into the product or service the business provides.
When it comes to communication, innovative solutions such as a telephone answering service can support the franchise network as a whole and offer peace of mind that every customer Is handled with the same level of care and professionalism.
Capture every enquiry
In addition to consistent brand standards, franchisors need to be sure that franchisees are putting their all into developing their individual businesses. Equal effort should be placed into generating, capturing and nurturing leads in order to grow customer portfolios and boost their – and your – bottom lines.
Generating leads comes down to the franchisee’s chosen marketing strategy, and different techniques will suit different businesses, depending on their size, location and tustry But once this is determined, and enquiries are coming in, how can you make sure that none slip through the net? Few businesses can afford to miss enquiries; for busy franchisors and franchisees, making sure they capture every lead is a familiar challenge.
By investing in solutions such as telephone answering services and digital innovations like live chat. franchisors can relleve franchisees of the responsibility of capturing leads. allowing them to focus on the day-to-day running of the business. What’s more, staffing overheads can be reduced.
Tools like these are growing in popularity as consumer behaviour changes and companies start to consider how they can meet the needs of the always on’ modern customer.
Research from Moneypenny reveals that 37 per cent of live chats take place outside of office hours and 16 per cent take place at weekends, demonstrating the importance of being contactable outside of traditional working hours.
Many of Moneypenny’s franchisor clients are experiencing increased engagement with prospective franchisees, and, similarly, franchisees are experiencing increased leads and sales thanks to this digital channel.
Deliver outstanding service
The quality of service a business provides directly affects the customer experience as well as the overall image and reputation of your brand. It’s certainly what a client will remember and a key reason for valuable referral.
However, the unfortunate reality Is that many franchises can attribute their downfall to poor customer service. To avoid this, it’s smart to look at ways to improve customer contact and measure the efficacy of your customer service methodology to ensure your brand is associated with the highest standards of customer care – no matter which franchise a customer is dealing with. The most successful franchise brands have addressed these points and built a brand that is centred on exceptional and consistent customer care.
Delivering excellent customer service time and time again depends on implementing a system that makes the customer feel valued right from the word ‘go’. Call-handling solutions allow franchisees to offer a consistent and personalised service to all clients – new and existing – while technology such as live chat ensures that customers know their enquiries are important and being handled quickly whenever they get in touch. Even just a simple message to thank a customer for making contact will reassure and create trust.
How Moneypenny supports Jackson Fire & Security
One franchise business that already knows how technology can support customer service is Jackson Fire & Security. The company is often out visiting clients so it wasn’t always possible to answer the telephone.
As a result, the growing franchise was missing valuable business opportunities and falling short of the customer service it wanted to provide. Realising something needed to change. Jackson Fire & Security turned to Moneypenny to support its franchises with telephone answering minus the associated HR overheads.
Rachel Evans, marketing manager at jackson Fire & Security, explains:
“We are committed to offering our franchisees a complete package and turned to Moneypenny to support them with telephone answering We were instantly blown away by Moncypenny’s reputation and our franchisees are now assured that they are capturing every lead and delivering a fantastic first impression.”
“We had really high expectations of the service and the Moneypenny team has certainly delivered what they promised. Moneypenny offers a completely bespoke service and we couldn’t be happier.”
