Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2014 | Page 36
Grow Market Lead
34
Connecting
with
customers
BY JACK MACKEY
Beyond Platitudes
Three customer insights from top franchise execs
S
ervice Management Group
(SMG) recently conducted
interviews with top franchise
executives. We asked them,
“How do you go beyond platitudes
about customer service to systems that
engage customers and deliver marketing
impact through a superior customer experience?” During these conversations,
executives critiqued their customer experience management programs and
shared what’s next. Three key business
insights emerged from our study.
1) How customer experience metrics predict financial results is not
widely understood. Executives ask,
“What’s the impact of customer satisfaction on the bottom line?” and are looking
to their customer experience measurement model to provide the answer. To
senior leaders, it’s not about measurement
of satisfaction, it’s about revenue-driven
management of the customer experience.
If a company’s customer experience metrics are scores such as overall satisfaction,
intent to return, intent to recommend,
etc., then improvements in those metrics
must correlate with business metrics like
comp sales growth, average spend, and
share of customer wallet.
Yet only a fraction of the executives
we spoke with think franchisees and their
employees really understand the connection between customer experience results
and the financial performance of the
organization. On the other hand, these
same executives believe the majority of
senior fra