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