I recently attended my first International Franchise Association show in Phoenix and the one question I heard repeatedly from home service franchisors was: “How can we ensure that our franchisees are delivering our brand and quality standards on every single appointment?” Here are some answers:

Training Helps

Training is clearly one of the core areas that helps franchisees understand the value of high quality, consistent service delivery. But as President Ronald Reagan said about agreements with the old Soviet Union, “trust, but verify.”  How can a franchisor train the franchises to understand the value of consistent, quality service delivery and verify that they’re actually delivering? One way is to implement a system-wide standard of work order management. This should be a system that has key functionality and high value for the franchisor, the franchisees, and their field service people, as well as the consumer of your services and products.

Have the Right KPIs and Monitor Them

To enable this, it helps if everyone involved is using the same platform and that platform has the processes and procedures built-in with easy to follow methods and checklists. You also need built-in key performance indicators (KPIs) on the core aspects of service quality. Such things as “On time arrival.” If your franchisee schedules to be at the customer’s home at 3 PM, the franchisor needs to know when they actually show up.

Measuring “On-time arrival” every time an appointment is made allows visibility into the consistency of your services system. If you are doing repair work, or other more technical services, what is the “first-time fix rate”? In other words, did the technician have to come back for a second or even a third visit to satisfy the customer? This KPI has a direct correlation to delivery costs, profit, and customer satisfaction.