Everyone talks about how excellent customer service is an absolute must for any business that hopes to succeed long-term, but only a small handful of businesses differentiate themselves by understanding the big picture version of this principle.
The truth is, excellent customer service can only happen when you have service excellence at every level of your organization, starting with yourself. Now, if you are a founder or CEO with any real success under your belt, you’ve already done serious work on yourself in terms of mindset, leadership skills, personal discipline, and other key aspects, so I won’t go into too much detail there. Suffice it to say, we always have room to make ourselves stronger and more effective, and it’s our personal duty to keep growing and improving every day. Remember also that culture starts at the top, so if you are going to expect high performance from your organization then you absolutely must demonstrate high performance yourself.
What does the next level look like? As a franchisor, the next level is your HQ staff, and not just the sales and marketing teams, but every single member of the staff, including janitors. The way you interact with them will dictate how they interact with everyone else they meet while working with you—that includes their coworkers, franchisees, clients, customers, and any outside parties. You can and should create formal systems for customer service training, but none of those are going to work if you don’t set your own example first.
Now if you have a large organization, you might be wondering if you need multiple layers to your customer service training, like you would have for most other skill sets. The good news is: no, you don’t. In fact, what you really should do is create one service values training program that applies to everyone. The point here is not to identify and polish up a few ‘experts’ in service excellence—the point is to raise standards for everyone and empower them to share ideas with each other, keep each other accountable, and work together to systemize their service excellence.
5 ways to create service excellence at every level of your franchise:
Demonstrate the customer/client service you expect by showing that same service to your team.
Create your employee/franchisee customer service training as not just a resource, but an experience.
Embrace your own personal style and use it to filter who you do business with. Remember, you don’t need to win over everyone—just the employees, franchisees, clients, and customers who count.
Provide high-level coaching to your team. If you’re a high-level coach yourself, you can do this personally. If not, make arrangements with a coaching service.
Make it a priority to create a culture of service. No matter what it takes now, this will pay off in the long run.
The specifics of how you want to interact with your staff (and by extension your clients and customers) really depends on your own mission, market, industry, and personal style, but I can tell you this: openness and transparency are the best ways to gain people’s trust and hold on to it.
One thing I’ve done personally, which I highly recommend you do too: provide personal and/or professional coaching to your HQ staff. I also work as a business coach, so I hosted my own coaching session for my HQ team, but you could tap into this same effect by hiring or referring a coaching company. Creating better service and communication is often a matter of becoming a more effective person, so I consider this just a smart strategic investment.
Onto the next level: your franchisees. On some level, you already recognize that your franchisees are, first and foremost, your clients. You have to sell them on the franchise first, and building trust with them will always be a top priority. Still, let’s take that one step further. Have you communicated to them the customer service standards you expect of them out in the field? Are you and your staff following these same communication standards when you reach out to franchisees? Again, you do want to create resources that educate your franchisees and their teams on your customer service standards, but the most important thing you can do is set a strong example.
Of course, you may not always have as much direct contact with your franchisees as you do with your HQ staff, so how do you bridge that gap? Here’s how: you create an educational resource (such as a ‘University’ site) that not only describes your customer service standards—it also puts them in action. In other words, you don’t want your service standards training process to just be a pile of information. You want it to be a dynamic, interactive, high-energy experience. Make sure it emphasizes and re-emphasizes the key actions and values you need from your franchisees. Don’t worry about trying to have them learn everything in one go. You and your team will have time later to coach them on the details, so just make sure they completely understand the big points.
The most important level of service, of course, is your franchise’s clients and customers. Now, see how when you provide better service to your immediate staff, and they provide better service to your franchisees, your franchisees provide better service to clients and customers? If you’ve never seen this effect in action before, it might seem like a stretch, but I can tell you from experience that it works. The highest rate of sustainable growth I’ve ever seen in my own franchise happened after I made it a top priority to create service excellence at every level of the organization.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bedros Keuilian is a best-selling author, speaker and business consultant. He’s the founder and CEO of Fit Body Bootcamp, one of the nation’s fastest growing franchises and an investor in over a dozen companies ranging from software, digital ad agencies and coaching and consulting services. www.fitbodybootcamp.com
