Your franchises are multiplying quicker than you can count, and you’re worried about one key thing: consistency. After all, your brand is known and loved for its friendly service and reliable products. What if one (or more!) of your stores strays from these standards and jeopardizes the customer experience?
It’s not something you like to think about, but it’s something you should think about. And, having recently watched The Founder, you know that even McDonald’s had to overcome this challenge. But, unlike McDonald’s in the mid-1950s, you’ve got all the benefits of online franchise training to ensure standardization across your stores. Let’s explore these next.
The benefits of standardized training for franchises
Standardized franchise training programs give your franchisees the skills they need to run successful and sustainable stores that boost your brand’s reputation and profitability. And that’s just the beginning. We’ve included the full list below.
Deliver a consistent customer experience
Think about your favorite franchise. It could be a bakery, gas station, health club, or anything else you frequent. When you visit any one of their stores, no matter where it is, you expect to have the same great experience, right?
Well, a consistent customer experience is one of the top benefits of standardized training for franchises. When staff across all stores have the same product knowledge and service skills, you can rest assured that customers are enjoying the same experience at every store they visit.
Track training requirements more often and accurately
Training will always be important, but it becomes essential when your industry has compliance standards to contend with. After all, just one partner’s failure to comply could have a high price for your whole franchise. But don’t take our word for it.
The franchise Supermac’s says it best. “There are many legal requirements in the food industry. Our employees must follow rules about manual handling and take part in safety courses. We wanted a better way to track who had completed training and when. So, if an issue ever arises, we’ll be able to pull up those records without any problems.”
With this in mind, Supermac’s began leveraging the franchise LMS eFront to keep track of their compliance training status. You, too, can use standardized training to ensure that all of your partners are meeting their training and compliance requirements.
Increase your revenue
Perhaps the most attractive of all standardized training benefits is improved revenue. Think about it. When your franchisees and staff are knowledgeable and up-to-date on your products, processes and best practices, they’re more likely to make customers happy.
Over 40% of happy customers come back to buy again – and happy customers share their experiences with other people. This is a great opportunity to grow your sales and create loyal customers, wouldn’t you say?
Protect your brand reputation
Trust is at the heart of every great franchise. Customers trust your brand promise, values, and mission, and choose your business because these things set you apart from the competition. But ensuring that every store delivers on your brand promise, and lives your mission and values, can be tough.
It’s a little like broken telephone. Each time the message about your promise, mission and values are passed on to someone else, they’re interpreted and explained slightly differently. The more layers in your franchise, the more the original message becomes distorted. The good news is, franchise training courses turn broken telephone into yesterday’s problem.
Online standardized training for franchises means that every member of your franchise accesses the same videos and other learning materials about your brand. This way, everyone understands and represents your brand the right way. Your brand is protected.
Save costs for you and the franchisee
Standardized work training obviously goes a long way toward business success, but not every franchisee sees it that way. Some say training costs them valuable time that could be used to welcome customers or manage floor staff. And they’re not even considering the costs that you as the franchisor cover when it comes to instructors and printed materials.
Luckily, training doesn’t need to be one of your biggest enterprise franchise costs. By creating and delivering your franchise training online, you save time and money. Why? Because content is created once, and accessed as often as necessary from anywhere, anytime. No travel, no schedules, no fuss.
Plus, with online courses, you can easily update your content. This ensures that all franchisees receive up-to-date learning materials, without the costs of reprinting manuals.
What you need to implement standardized training
If you’ve made it to this section, you’re already convinced that standardized training is crucial for franchises. Nay, crucial for your franchise. Now you need the building blocks to set up your own training program. So, we’ve listed them below.
Instructional designer
The instructional designer is the architect of a training program. They start by identifying the knowledge and skills that need to be developed, and then create the course structure and content that will achieve those learning objectives.
If you don’t have a full-time instructional designer, this role could be filled by the training or learning manager on your team. Either way, they’ll need to work hand-in-hand with a subject matter expert (SME).
Subject Matter Experts
SMEs are gurus within a certain job or industry, and their knowledge and experience are often used to inform training content. For example, someone with qualifications and years of experience in sales might have valuable knowledge to share through a retail training course about closing deals.
You might require a different SME for each training course, but they don’t have to be external consultants. You can often find the expertise you need within your organization. For example, one of your top-performing store managers could be the SME for a franchise-wide management training program.
Content creation tools
The most engaging training courses leverage multimedia like videos, podcasts, and infographics. Of course, having a full-time team of creatives to make these elements would be fantastic, but it’s also unnecessary. Today, there are a bunch of online tools that’ll turn you into the videographer, sound engineer and designer you always (or never) wanted to be.
For example, Canva provides design templates that can be customized to your needs. Powtoon gives you everything you need to create your own animated videos, without having any animation skills. And Audacity is an open-source digital audio editor and recording app that works great for podcasts.
A powerful LMS
Remember all those benefits of standardized training we mentioned before? Well, few (if any) of them are possible without a trusty learning management system (LMS). An LMS unlocks mobile learning, gamification and everything else that makes training convenient and engaging.
Choose the right LMS, and you’ll be creating and updating content in no time. Franchisees will have access to the same courses from anywhere, anytime. And all the while, you’ll be getting detailed reports to track learning and completion.
There are many LMSs to choose from today, and the best one for you will depend on your requirements. You might have guessed that we have a favorite LMS for franchises, though. We call it eFront.
Conclusion
The importance of standardized training for franchises can’t be ignored. It’s what keeps your brand alive and loved, and your customers happy. So, why not create your first standardized online course today?
