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My guess is that you survey your customers.
Don’t you?
Your business barometer
Franchisors and franchisees — business owners in general — somewhere along the way someone convinced you that customer surveys are a great barometer of customer satisfaction, and that you need to survey customers periodically, at least once a year, and that you can use the survey results to establish benchmarks, and by comparing benchmarks from one survey period to the next you can tell if you’re making progress, pleasing customers or disappointing customers, hitting your stride or missing it, maximizing your business potential or minimizing it, and you can also use the results to compensate and bonus employees — employees of the department that achieves X and maintains it for Y get the highest bonus — that type of thing.
Surveys can also be used to tell you when you need a new product or when it’s time to cancel a product, or even when it’s time to replace an employee or at least improve the employee’s attitude and skills.
Are you with me?
I hope so.
Do you think it’s wrong to survey customers?
And somehow I see you holding your breath because you’re thinking that it’s just like me to tell you that it’s wrong, it’s bad, it’s stupid, to survey customers . . . but how little you really know about me because I think you absolutely must survey your customers and survey them frequently, every day if it makes sense.
Survey results tell the story about your business
Survey results are the real guts of your business story, they tell you how you’re doing, how your business works or doesn’t work, where you need to make changes, how you need to step it up to satisfy your customers, and so forth.
Yes, absolutely, survey your customers and do it with great purpose! If you don’t have survey results, you don’t have a story. No story, what’s the sense of having a business?
A good survey becomes a tool for management
Through the years I’ve helped many of my clients design customer surveys. In 2001, when I started advising the We Buy Ugly Houses company in Dallas, one of my first assignments was to implement a franchisee survey. Later, as CEO of that company, I continued to support the survey each year, gathered the data, studied the results, compared the findings, looked closely at what the franchisees said about how our company was functioning, performing, delivering, and shared the results widely with our employees and franchisees.
It’s scary to survey customers, some of the time
Shortly after I was appointed CEO, we agreed to enter the independent survey sponsored by Franchise Business Review (FBR).That’s a scary thing for a franchisor to do because you turn over your franchisee list to FBR and they independently contact your franchisees, compile the survey results, and report the findings.
At the time, most franchisors did not (and still don’t) participate in a truly independent survey of franchisees, and we were one of perhaps 300 companies willing to take the risk to find out what our franchisees thought about us.
Better to know, I think!
And really, what was the risk?
It’s a far greater risk not to know what franchisees (or customers) think because whatever they think, they think.
Better to know if they are Detractors or Promoters. Either way, that’s how they are sharing with people, including prospective franchisees, and with the media. “Better to know,” I said, “and if the results aren’t good, we’ll make changes and improve.”
Happily, we ranked among the Top 50 Best Franchises in America that year, and we continued to score at the top during all the years that I was CEO.
Long-term benchmarking helps measure progress
We also continued to underwrite our in-house survey, which I had started as a consultant, because it provided long-term benchmarking, and in that survey, we also consistently scored well with our franchisees. There were challenges and problem areas — we discovered that our Accounting Department needed to become more customer friendly, and our very capable Controller saw to it that improvements occurred over time — and we discovered that some of our products and services weren’t getting the job done and we enhanced various programs to better serve our constituent franchisees.
Mostly, it was all good.
But I made one huge mistake
Of course, we had our share of Detractors, and that’s where I made my mistake. A mistake, I’ve since learned, that most franchisors and business owners make.
Chances are you’re making the same mistake.
There are customers and there are customers!
I’ve said for years — in articles and in seminars — that all franchisees are not created equal.
Some are better than others!
And yet, someohow I didn’t think of that when I looked at the survey results.
Not all votes deserve equal weight
Even though all franchisees are not created equal, when it came to surveying them I gave them equal weight. Each franchisee got one vote!
How dumb was that?
We’d tabulate the results, factor in the number of responses, and come up with a measurement, usually a percentage, i.e. 92% of the franchisees said . . . .
Some votes are more important than other votes
But since then it has occurred to me: Why should the opinion of the Top 25 franchisees count equally to the opinions of the Bottom 25 franchisees?
It hadn’t occurred to me to weight the answers by customer value, or value of the franchisee to the company. But just think about it for a moment. Should I really allow the Worst Franchisee equal weight to the opinion of the #1 Franchisee?
Give preference to the top performers
I’d do things differently today. While I’m curious as to what the Bottom 25 franchisees (or customers) have to say, I’m much more interested in what the Top 25 franchisees think about my business. Because those are the franchisees that deliver the brand’s value, that pay the company’s bills, and provide the bulk of the profits.
Those are also the franchisees that help sell more franchises!
I’d still pay attention to everyone’s opinion
Of course, I want to know what the mid-range franchisees have to say, too, because I can use that information to help move them up the success ladder. If I can zero in on weaknesses, i.e. our Operations staff isn’t providing the support that certain kinds of franchisees need, or our training programs fall short because they don’t deliver long-term impact, I can make corrections and help the mediocre franchisees improve, thus improving their value to the company.
Give the bottom feeders an opportunity to vent
I also want to know what the Bottom Feeders have to say, though I’m not going to give much credence to them, especially as they complain and whine, because that’s what they’re supposed to do. Every franchise attracts people who should not become franchisees and the best we can do for those folks is to help them out of the network as quickly as possible. It would be best if we could avoid awarding them franchises, but that’s not likely for many reasons.
Granted, you may be able to help some Bottom Feeders, but unless you’ve got a lot of money you’re better off paying more attention to the franchisees who pay you the bulk of the money!
It’s important to survey franchisees
So if you don’t survey your franchisees — you’re making a mistake. It’s important that you do.
It’s a mistake to count all the votes equally
If you do survey your franchisees you’re still making a mistake if you don’t weight the responses according to the value of the franchisee (or customer).
And that gets us back to that familiar question that I’m famous for asking: Do you know the value of your customer?
Most businesses – most franchisors and franchisees — do not. That’s the worst mistake of all!
Photo image by: ws23
Coming Soon: Two New Webinars
1. How To Capture & Keep Franchisees
2. How To Capture & Keep Customers
In the near future I’ll announce dates for these Webinars . . . The first Webinar is for franchisors, franchise development agents, master licensees, area representatives and others who sell franchises . . . the second is for any owner or manager of a business. You’ll learn the benefits of evaluating customers, valuing their contributions to your business, and how to keep the customers you really want.
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