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195: The Key to Successful Multi-Location Management · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

0:48
Welcome to the customer service revolution podcast with John DeJulius.
0:53
I'm Denise Thompson, managing partner for the DeJulius Group.
0:56
And today I'm talking to John about creating consistency when you have multiple locations.
1:03
So whether you're a franchise, franchisor, or you are just working to scale your business into multiple locations, we're going to be talking about that today.
1:14
How are you, John?
1:15
I'm great, Denise.
1:16
How are you?
1:17
I'm doing fantastic, thank you.
1:20
So this is an important topic and I know it's something that a lot of our clients deal with and a lot of people come to us particularly for this because they need to create
1:29
consistency.
1:31
So when you see this, what is your first piece of advice to a company that wants to open an.
1:39
open a second location, third, fourth, 500th location?
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and keep service consistent.
1:46
Yeah.
1:46
Well, I think unfortunately when they get to us and when they realize it's a problem is after they've scaled, right?
1:57
you know, and we've been guilty of this.
2:01
That first location is, is today now seems perfect because
2:07
like I always say, you know, our first business, the salons, we had great customer service because 50 % of the staff was
2:16
me and my wife.
2:18
So whether you got it you didn't, had to act like you got it.
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as we started having more success and growing, meaning more locations, our customer experience would back work backwards because we weren't everywhere.
2:29
And we weren't obsessed.
2:31
or we couldn't be obsessed with the type of employee we were hiring anymore because back when we needed one, we'd interview 15 and find the perfect one.
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Well, now when you need 15,
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you're interviewing 18.
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And the only reason why you're interviewing the extra three is because they didn't take the job, right?
2:52
So you're settling.
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One of my favorite quotes to this is, nothing will ruin your customer experience.
3:00
uh, faster than rapid growth.
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Cause you start compromising.
3:04
So yeah, if you could ideally, you want to button up your systems, create the, um, proof of concept.
3:13
I think which a lot of people do.
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But then as you grow, you got to make sure you attract and grow at the pace your business needs to survive that initial reputation versus just
3:28
growing to scale.
3:30
And that's hard.
3:30
That's really hard to turn down the opportunity of more customers and more...
3:36
Franchise ease if that's the business model.
3:40
You mentioned button up your systems go into that a little bit.
3:44
Well, we like to say there's six components of an experience.
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Any business right there's there's physical where you're at location.
3:51
parking, traffic.
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Can they get you off a freeway?
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Do you have your, they can't turn left to get down your street.
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I those are all things we deal with.
4:00
And those also aren't things you can change within.
4:05
a week's time, right?
4:08
Moving, know, knocking down walls and all that.
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But those are still things you have to consider,
4:13
Then the second one is the atmosphere, let's say.
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What's it like?
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The aesthetics.
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Those are things you can change.
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Some quickly and some a little bit longer, but...
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the decor, the build out, the updating, all those things.
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Then there's the operational.
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know, how easy are you doing business with, your hours of operation, products, know, inventory, you know, all those are critical processes.
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There's a technical, which is the...
4:49
from your technology, equipment, to the technical expertise of your staff and training.
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And then I don't know if I gave four or five there.
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Physical atmosphere, operational, technical.
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So I'm at four.
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I'm missing one.
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I know that the sixth one is the hospitality side, how we're making people feel.
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The training on that, the genuine hospitality that the employees realize that they're the experience.
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It's not just about
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the technology and all that.
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God, I'm blanking, but we'll look at- Functional?
5:22
We're talking, what?
5:25
Yeah, functional.
5:26
That's kind of your hours of operation, policies, procedures.
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those things.
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So yeah, all those, we have to, you know, button up and then we have to make sure it's repable, it's turnkey.
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for the next thing.
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Some that
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Franchisees, multi-unit, care what you are, if you have multiple locations, you get confused or they mistake as they say they're in the, let's say you're a refractive
5:55
surgery, an optical, a hair salon, restaurant, you name it, retail, and you have multiple locations.
6:03
people will say they're in the B to C, business to consumer, right?
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Because that's who they're selling to.
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But if you have multiple locations, regardless of the industry, you are B2B because headquarters is servicing operations, is servicing those locations.
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So you have to understand that you are in both B2B and B2C.
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So really buttoning up those and making sure that you can, you know, again, go proof of concept.
6:30
So if you're already there, and we do this with a lot of our clients,
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and you have 20, 200, we're working with a restaurant now that has 18 different brands, 2,600 units of those 18 different brands, and they're in several countries.
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So anytime you wanna, you have to have proof of concept, and the best place to get proof of concept, or the biggest mistake you can make is that you're like, all right,
6:58
customer experience is really failing, we're losing business, we're losing market share, we have to either go cheaper to compete or improve our experience so we don't have to
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discount.
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And then they'll run out flavor the month program, the year management, best seller and roll out a customer service program or an employee experience program.
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And that's always a flop, that'll never last if you do it that way.
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So proof of concept is take your three best stores, three corporate owned stores, three stores that you can use as an incubator, roll it out first there.
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And typically when you roll it out first, you're gonna find some mistakes, but now you don't have egg on your face that you rolled it out to.
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500 or 1500 stores and then you're pulling back and you lose credibility and no one will buy into it.
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You figure it out that you shouldn't have rolled this, this and this out at the same time because it was too much tasking on one part of the business.
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You roll it out, you find out what works, what doesn't.
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Then you also have proof of concept that you can show that since we've rolled it out to these locations, their average ticket, their retention, their referral, their NPS, their
8:07
reviews, all those, and then it becomes more of a thing of why do we have to do this to why didn't we get to be part of that initial beta test?
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They're jealous of the initial beta test that they're performing higher.
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So once you have it locked down, once you have figured out for those several locations how to best do this part of the training,
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how do you roll it out then to the rest of the organization?
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If you have 10, 30, 100 locations.
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So depending on what type of business model you are, if you think about Starbucks, they're mostly corporate owned.
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They're not franchisees other than a few.
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have the anomalies there as Magic Johnson has some his own, I think they're in.
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lower income cities.
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And then you have some that are licensed Starbucks, which is not.
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but the vast, vast majority of the 10,000 Starbucks stores are corporate owned.
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That is easier in a way because you don't have the franchisee, franchisor, contracts I can't tell you.
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It's kind of like I'm an independent employee.
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I can't tell you certain things unless it's expressed.
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in the initial agreements.
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So it really becomes about a sales job.
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poor performers or demonstrating the highest same store sales growth from year to year, the ones that use this, this and this.
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repeat the question.
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How do you roll out that training?
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to all those locations?
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So again, we say there are six steps to launching a successful, probably anything, but first one is you create the systems, the best practice, that you're gonna start using Ford
10:05
or the Nevers and Always.
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What does that mean you're gonna start using Ford?
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Collect family, occupation, recreation and dreams.
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and...
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and mention something and mention their name two or more times.
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Do the five E's, eye contact, enthusiastic greet, ear to ear smile, engage and educate, simple low hanging fruit, journey mapping, which is, know, we call it creating your
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signature customer experience.
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And that's really important because, you know, if you think about the great brands that have made price irrelevant, brands that
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When you ask what are brands people can't live without, they become the majority of the answers.
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And that could be anyone from Amazon to Starbucks back in the day.
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They're struggling right now.
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Absolutely Chick-fil-A.
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On the West Coast, In-N-Out Burger, Apple, American Express, Lululemon has been mentioned.
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Walmart has been, I'm sorry, Target has been mentioned.
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Do you have any?
11:01
Denise, that you either hear or own?
11:04
I think you hit on mine.
11:06
Yeah, which ones?
11:08
Apple's a big one.
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Lululemon.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So yeah, whichever one, it might be, you know, Lexus or BMW or, you know, one time Tesla, I think was maybe in that running.
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If you think about them, all had Nordstrom's, they all have a signature experience that's unique.
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unlike, you know, anyone in their industry before them.
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And now people are trying to knock it off.
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But, you know, you can tell that, you know, when Nordstroms opened up,
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in an area and they do the things where they carry the bag around the counter instead of handing it to you, right?
11:47
That's a Nordstrom signature experience that in our area 25 years ago when they opened up.
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Dillard's would try to do that, but they weren't doing it right or consistently or, but you'd know, it was a compliment, the Nordstroms.
12:02
But anyway, so you create the systems.
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and then you launch it.
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So creating is easy.
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I mean, you got to create it.
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It's got to be realistic.
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You got to make it practical.
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I think the biggest mistake that companies make is they'll say, you know,
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deliver a great experience, be customer obsessed, go above and beyond.
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I mean, if you tell 500 people that, you'll get 500 personal interpretations.
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So it has to be very prescriptive.
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What is prescriptive?
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You know, again, I love the five E's.
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contact, enthusiastic greet, ear to ear smile, engage, educate.
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Get the customers and introduce yourself.
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Thanks for calling.
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ABC, this is John.
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Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?
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You give me your name.
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If the automated caller ID didn't pull up your account, I can now pull it up and see that you've been a VIP, a client for 10 years, or you just came in for the first time a month
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ago, but I can stay a couple steps ahead of you, say how's your job at Progressive.
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All those things, right?
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Now, you create it, but you don't launch it all at once.
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You launch small parts, so the first step is created.
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The second step, is you're...
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eating the elephant one bite at a time.
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Beta test it at your departments or your stores.
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Get proof of concept.
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And now you launch it company-wide.
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and whatever that looks like.
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A perfect world, you get everyone in an auditorium.
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That's usually not.
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practical, especially if you're all over and you don't want to close your operation.
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So that might be over the course of a week, you know, doing a road show or Zoom or whatever, but you got to, got to, you know, launch, hey, here's what we're doing.
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Here's the training materials.
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Here's what you, maybe we're just doing it to managers and trainers and GMs.
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Here's what you need to do next week.
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Here is the training materials that they've been sent to you.
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Here's what you're gonna give them.
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Here's the videos you're gonna show them.
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Blah, blah.
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That's usually where people stop, and that's why it fails, because then it's just flavor of the month, program of the year, management, best seller, was a rah, rah.
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We're all excited, but in two weeks, no one's actually doing it.
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So now, step three.
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Step one is creative.
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Step two is to launch it, train it.
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Step three is certify it.
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Just because you sat and watched a video or attended a conference, two things.
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One, doesn't mean you paid attention, right?
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Or two, doesn't mean you, absorbed it and bought into it.
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So now certify, all right, Denise, you just watched this 45-minute training, whatever that may be.
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What are the five E's?
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Here's 10.
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What are the five E's?
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know, what does Ford mean?
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How do you, you know, do that?
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You know, whatever those things are.
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And then you implement it.
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All right, effective June 1st, it's gonna be, you know, law.
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So I suggest in April and May, you know, start making it a habit.
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But June 1st, you're gonna be held accountable and talk about what that looks like.
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Mystery shoppers, obviously, you know, managers hopefully modeling it and inspecting it.
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Part of your...
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customer satisfaction.
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Hey, did we use your name two or more time before we hung up?
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Did we ask you if there's anything else we can do?
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Then we measure it, measure that it's, you know, being done and measure that it's having an impact on all your KPIs, referrals, retention, customer satisfaction, NPS.
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And then the final step is sustain it.
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Do it again.
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Keep on doing it.
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There's no ribbon cutting ceremony.
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You never arrive.
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you know, and probably besides doing phase one, now you're gonna reduce phase two.
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So I always make phase one low-hanging fruit easy, so we're successful.
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People see that we, you know, they like it, they like how they're being treated, they like how the reaction they're getting.
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It wasn't that hard.
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And then they're gonna buy into the next phase.
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And that's not only...
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the frontline customer facing employees, but that's the GMs and the franchisees who are all about how much this is going to cost me.
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Is this going to increase payroll?
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Is this going to be, you you're taking, you know, I have to train my employees.
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All those are expenses if they do impact those.
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So you want to make sure that the ROI is there and that's the part of measuring.
16:09
Great.
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So once you have people trained, once it's rolled out, once you're measuring it and it's happening consistently.
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great for all the people that were there originally.
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What do you do for new people coming in, new managers?
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How do you get them up to speed?
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That's a great question.
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And so everything we do when we work with a client that we just outlined is replicated for new employee orientation.
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that training will be mandatory training and that certification and the testing will be mandatory part of their first week.
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of new employee orientation on the customer experience things.
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And sometimes they're easier to train because they don't have the habits.
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They aren't saying, well, we've never had to do this before.
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We've always done it this way.
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However, however, however,
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the best training in the world for new employees will evaporate once they get in the job and if they see that the existing employees don't do it.
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And then they say, well, I thought we were supposed to use Ford.
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I thought we were supposed to use a white cape for new customers and a black cape for existing and the new employees say, we don't really do you know, you have to, the hardest
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is attacking the existing.
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generation of employees and it certainly can be done and it gets done every day.
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But at the same time, you replicate that training for the new employees.
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You just have to make sure you're not sending them out there to an environment that is not executing what you've just taught them.
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And how often do you recommend that companies review this, go back through the training, check to see what's working, what people are still doing, or maybe what's changed.
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Maybe we've decided this doesn't work as well as it used to.
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Now some locations are doing this instead.
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Maybe this one's doing something a little bit different.
18:02
Yeah.
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So the best companies in customer experience, again, realize it's not an annual thing, annual.
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customer experience trainings like deodorant, within time it wears off and the odor comes back, right?
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And they literally, literally, literally touch the experience daily.
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And people are gonna be like, you know, what are you talking about?
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That's unrealistic.
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And so, know, anything you wanna, you know, be effective in your life, you gotta create daily habits, brushing your teeth, working out.
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feeding your mind with positivity, all those things.
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And...
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we call it TOMA, T-O-M-A, top of mind awareness.
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And so the daily isn't as hard as you think.
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It might be a pre-shift tunnel of saying, all right, everyone today is, you know, January 5th, Wednesday, and, you know, so-and-so's called in sick.
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Maybe it's a snowstorm, you know, out there.
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Schools are closed.
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We'll have more kids, less kids.
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You know, something.
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And then they end it with, you know, with a couple things.
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They'll say, all right, who can tell me what the...
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customer experience action statement is?
19:01
And then maybe Denise, you read it lot often.
19:03
So, well, Denise, that's great.
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You work in front of the house.
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What about for you, Jeremy, you working back in the house or are you working corporate?
19:09
You work in the warehouse.
19:10
Well, how does that mean to you?
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The next day it could be who can tell me what one of our pillars are, you know, expertise no more.
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All right.
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What's that mean to you?
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Because you work here.
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What's that mean to you that you work here?
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You know, and you know, the next day it could be, if the never is never overshare, what's the always?
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And someone says, I just take care of it.
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Well, can someone give me an example of where they've been guilty of or caught themselves about to overshare?
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it's just a 30 second hit.
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and you can do that in so many different ways.
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That could be a quick video that goes out.
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So those are the daily hits to keep top of mind awareness.
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Another great best practice is sharing.
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as often as you can daily, weekly, in any vehicle, in person huddle and zoom in an email, a video is, I want to tell you what Denise did.
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She went above and beyond.
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She did
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she was the best moment in our customer's day, and here's the example, and that just keeps that peer pressure.
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That's the short-term daily quick hits.
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Obviously all new employees every time reorientating existing employees, making them go through the customer experience training every two years.
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But quarterly, excuse me, the KPI dashboards, Revisit and we call them return on experience dashboards.
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sharing with people where they're at, what's their retention rate is, what's referral.
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rate is, what their NPS, what their Google reviews, whatever those may be.
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So people are losing sleep at night from top management to GMs to the actual employee, knowing that, you know, if you don't crush it every time,
20:59
you know, it can come back to haunt you by tomorrow if you can track it that way.
21:05
You talked about huddles and I think that's a really strong piece for a lot of organizations that, you know, from Home Depot to Chick-fil-A that keep people on the same
21:15
page.
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What if you're in a business where it's difficult to get people together?
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Maybe you don't have typical shifts.
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What do you recommend in those scenarios?
21:25
Yeah.
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So we always say if it's a place where people come to work and the work from home, remote flexibility, working is harder.
21:34
Well, you you do it with 25 % of the staff and record it and the rest can watch it later.
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Or you just do a video and you send it to everyone on whatever vehicle everyone gets their internal messages and
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so it might be one person talking, doing the huddle, but people can comment, leave comments, share like that.
21:55
So it's easier today with the technology.
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Doesn't have to be everyone at 8 a.m.
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that's gonna work today or work this shift.
22:05
And does that hold for single locations or how do you keep communication open through the whole organization?
22:12
You talked about above and beyond stories, which I think are a great way to inspire people to do more.
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How do you share those same kind of thing through an entire organization?
22:23
Yeah, so I know our spas do a motivational Monday video that comes out, I think every Monday and it is kind of their weekly huddle.
22:34
Hey, I congratulate Sandy for beating her week.
22:37
She had her best week ever and let me tell you about a story.
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We got a review, a five-star review or how so-and-so
22:45
You know, we just got an email, a voicemail, you know, of customer saying that she was checking out and it was a snowstorm and, you know, the receptionist went outside, started
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her car and brushed off her snow.
22:57
Something real easy like that, that just, you know, is the peer pressure that reminds everyone this is who we are, this is what we do.
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That's not abnormal.
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That's common behavior.
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You'll never get in trouble for something you do.
23:09
You'll get in trouble for something you don't do.
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And also making sure that the above and beyond doesn't have to be heroic, finding the burning building and rescuing the pet or the child in it.
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Cause when it's like that, while those are great stories, those don't come up that often.
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So you want to make it as simple as I remembered that so-and-so's daughter was applied to a certain college and I asked her and she couldn't believe I remembered or.
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you know, whatever those simple little positive moments are that you can, you know, do for people.
23:43
You celebrate those.
23:46
Great tips.
23:47
Thank you.
23:48
Thank you.
23:49
Is there anything else you'd like to add when people are?
23:52
You've been doing it.
23:52
You've worked know, all the operations of all our businesses.
23:56
Anything that's worked for you, either as an employee or on the opposite side of making sure that this is instilled
24:03
when it falls on you and it's no longer about the original entrepreneurs.
24:09
I think technology has been a big help for us, but it's making sure you have the right technology, one that's easy enough for everyone to use, one that's accessible for people
24:19
at their, whatever their point of work is, their station, so that we can keep things personalized.
24:27
That I think has been a big one.
24:30
You talked about the Ford and that's a way that we've utilized it.
24:36
Yeah, yeah.
24:38
Well, good.
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That's all for today.
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We still have the live streams going on.
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streams are virtual.
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quarterly workshops that you can have your key people on and their actual workshops are not just lectures.
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We give you examples and we give you time to work on it and you get to ask and share and ask us right there live.
25:01
And for anyone that can't be on it live, you can share it with team members and do it with them.
25:08
So we have them every quarter.
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The first one is
25:12
which you may or may not be hearing this after is March 10th on creating your experiential non-negotiable standards for the customer experience.
25:24
And then, I don't know, I know there's a service recovery one, there's recruiting customer experience rock stars, onboarding.
25:36
Yeah, so I think those are the other
25:38
the whole years.
25:39
So.
25:40
you get a special price for all four or you could just buy it pick and choose the ones you want.
25:46
And we will have links to that in our show notes.
25:51
So people can register that way or they can go directly to the dejuliusgroup.com live stream.
25:59
Thanks, John.
26:00
Have a great week.
26:01
You too.
26:02
Thanks everyone.