(FS10) Respecting the Customer Base of Your Franchise Company

While you maintain your franchise, keep an eye on your franchisor and where they place their attention. Is it customers before the franchise or franchise before the customers? You should have found this out prior to applying for any franchise, but if you didn’t, that’s okay. This just helps you find out where their attention is at, where they spend most of their resources, and are they more concerned with the community or themselves. You can only hope that your franchise is customer-centric. Regardless, it’s always important to:

Know Your Franchise Customers

Knowing your customers is of utmost importance in order to provide them with the services and products that they’re looking for in their daily lives. If you don’t know your customers, you won’t know how to help them if they come in your door. You know what the funny thing is? Most customers don’t even know what they want when they walk in your door. Most customers want to be told what they want or what they need. Now is this a catchall idea? Definitely not. However it is an important ability to harness in order to not just create a personal experience (because you’re paying attention to your customer’s needs), but to up-sell and make business better on your side.

When Advertising Brings Customers to Your Franchise

With the help of advertising, customers are now storming your business. What do they want? The promises that you made them through your advertising. It might seem like a daunting task to know your customers better than they know themselves, but many franchisors now have systems to help you with that. They have POS (point-of-sale) programs or systems that capture consumer information such as name, phone number, and address. Sometimes they even record what the last purchase made at the franchise and often they can record purchases past that to form an algorithm to help predict what they might need. This is especially popular in any company that offers personalized credit cards or frequent buyer cards.

Providing Good Customer Service

Another important part of knowing your customer is by providing good customer service. This helps by creating a trusting bond between you and your customer. They are more likely to tell you things when they trust you. Most people love to talk and especially about themselves, but unless they’re extremely outgoing, they might not be prepared to divulge into their life ambitions and the real goal behind why they entered your store. The best way to create this bond of trust is by providing customers with good and fair products or services as a reasonable price. Customers want value. They remember where they got it and will come back for it again and again. Value doesn’t just mean the amount they get for their dollar, but the quality of whatever they’re paying for. You can sell someone five pounds of strawberries for $3. It might sound like a great deal to most… until they open up the package and most of the strawberries are rotten or terrible tasting.  The value just went down because of the quality and they will remember you for that over how much you sold them for how little.

If you offer the best product and/or the best service, your customers will always come back.

Continue Reading More From the Franchise Series 10:

• Creating an Effective Marketing Plan for Your Franchises
• Methods to Keep Your Franchises in Front of Your Audience
• Evaluating National and Local Franchise Advertising Strategies
• If Your Franchise Doesn’t Have National Advertising
• Franchise Advertisements Will Effect Your Public Relations
• Maintaining Good Relationships as a Part of Franchise Business
• Franchise Impressions Set By Non-Products In Your Business