Achieving high customer satisfaction is crucial and a strategic priority for businesses of all sizes. This becomes particularly challenging for larger enterprises, with regional or even global operations, necessitating innovative solutions to sustain service excellence. In response, AI is emerging as a key player in redefining these companies’ approaches to customer satisfaction.

You may ask yourself, “What exactly is AI, and why do I keep hearing people talk about it?” AI is like giving your computer a brain that learns and adapts. It can analyze data, identify patterns, and even make decisions to improve your business. AI is more than just a buzzword; it’s a powerful tool capable of revolutionizing operations, maximizing efficiency, and providing unparalleled insights at scale. With this rapid technological growth in our industry, we want to ensure no one is left behind.

How AI Can Help Your Business

For large-scale franchises and multi-location businesses navigating the complexities of diverse customer experiences, harnessing the power of AI offers a distinct competitive advantage. With the ability to rapidly analyze the feedback of countless customers, you can pinpoint areas needing improvement at specific locations, or across the board, at lightning speed.

Understanding your customers’ experiences is the first step in improving customer satisfaction. AI can quickly help you understand what is or isn’t working and, perhaps most importantly, the changes needed to improve customer experience. Making changes at scale can be very costly, so having a way to reliably quantify customer satisfaction data en masse is an exciting opportunity with AI. As they say, time is money, and AI’s ability to save you time is an invaluable asset.

Additionally, AI can be a powerful tool for communicating with your customers. An AI-powered chat function or AI-assisted communications can be a great way to engage with customers, ensuring everybody feels seen and heard. This kind of enhanced customer service can drive increased customer loyalty and growth. A report published by Capgemini in July 2020 shared that 54% of customers engage in AI-enabled interactions like chatbots, assistants, etc. So it’s safe to assume that 4 years later, that number has only increased.

Embracing The Future of AI

Are you ready to leap into the world of AI? From streamlining processes to personalizing customer interactions, AI empowers businesses to meet and exceed customer expectations. Now is the time to embrace these opportunities to grow your business!

At Listen360, we’re embracing AI’s potential. We’re currently building out our solution that will help businesses like yours thrive in today’s marketplace. Launching later this year, Listen360’s AI solution will be an exciting new way to drive improved customer satisfaction and business growth. If you want to join our waitlist and learn more, click here!

As a service provider who wants to take their business to the next level, you are bombarded with the same advice. Prioritize customer service, offer deals, and have a presence on social media.

But your customers want more. They’re tired of robotic interactions and generic promotions. They crave experiences that resonate and make them feel valued and understood.

You know that warm feeling you get when your local barista remembers your usual order and greets you with a smile? Or when your mechanic goes above and beyond to explain your car trouble and throws in a free oil change? That’s the magic of customer experience (CX).

It’s about building genuine connections that keep your clients returning for more. They’ll buy more. They’ll be more loyal. They’ll tell more of their friends.

This article will examine the difference between customer experience and customer service.

How is CX linked to your brand’s reputation? Why should you focus on customer experience services? And why is investing in CX a smart way to enhance your reputation with your customers?

We’ll also give you some ideas on how to ramp up your customer experience services to the next level and attract a loyal fan base.

Let’s get started.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: Tips for Effectively Communicating with Customers and Prospects

What’s the Difference Between Customer Experience and Customer Service?

Customer service addresses specific issues or requests. It manages concerns that have already arisen. Think call centers and help desks. They’re crucial for any winning business. However, customer service alone can leave customers feeling like a problem that needs to be solved.

Customer experience takes the interaction with your company to a higher level. It’s about the entire customer journey and emotional connection with your brand. It’s about making them feel appreciated and special.

Customer experience services try to anticipate the needs of your customers. They create a personal experience. Your clients feel welcome and part of your community. Good CX creates devoted fans.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: Connect with Your Customers and Grow Your Business

The connection between customer experience services and your brand reputation is deep. Each one influences and shapes the other in significant ways.

When your customers enjoy their experience with your brand, they recommend you to others. They post positive online reviews and testimonials. Their enthusiasm attracts new customers and builds trust in your brand.

In today’s digital age, a single bad experience can go viral and damage your reputation. A few unhappy voices can create a negative perception of your brand. This drives potential clients away.

But investing in customer experience services is not just about delighting your customers. It’s a survival strategy. Every interaction with your clients shapes your reputation. That impacts your bottom line.

Concentrating on CX allows you to:

Create an Emotional Connection.

Focusing on customer experience rather than customer service builds a better brand reputation. You create an emotional connection with your customers. They feel respected and special. This creates loyalty and a sense of shared values.

Build Strong Word-of-Mouth.

Reviews and recommendations are front-line customer experience opportunities. They’re the first things customers seek online when checking out a company they don’t know. That means word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is more valuable than ever.

Exceptional customer experience fuels passionate WOM. People trust recommendations from others. When you create a positive customer experience, you foster genuine and organic connections. You get rave reviews.

Command Premium Prices.

A solid brand reputation allows you to charge premium prices for products or services. Clients are willing to pay more for proven brands they trust and enjoy. What’s more, 42% of U.S. consumers say they would pay more for a great customer experience.

Increase Employee Satisfaction.

When your brand has a stellar reputation, your employees feel proud to be part of your team. They enjoy their job and will go the extra mile for your clients.

Providing positive customer experience services is a win-win situation for everyone. It rewards both customers and your employees.

Empower your team to go the extra mile. Listen to feedback and keep improving. You’ll turn fleeting encounters into lifelong fans.

RELATED ARTICLE: 5 Ways to Quickly Boost Your Customer Feedback Strategy

How Customer Experience Builds Strong Customer Relationships

Imagine your business is a person out on a first date. They wouldn’t show up late or forget their date’s name, right? Same with CX.

CX is about being charming and attentive. Invest in enhancing your customer experience services. Then, your relationship starts on a positive note. You’ll build trust and pave the way for a long-lasting relationship. You stand out from the crowd.

First Impressions Matter.

Make sure your website is well-designed. It should be user-friendly and convey your brand personality. It’s like dressing to impress a date. Creating a favorable first impression is important for having an ongoing connection.

Your content should be engaging and informative. Put on your best outfit, and tailor your marketing materials to attract the people you want as fans.

Go Beyond Small Talk.

Once the conversation starts flowing, show genuine interest in your customer’s needs and preferences. Offer personalized recommendations.

Want to know more about them? Be a good listener. Remember their name. Answer their questions and hear their feedback.

Use data and analytics to measure and improve CX.

Track the “likes” and “dislikes” of your customers. It’s almost like being a mind reader.

Tracking can give your brand valuable insights into customer behavior. You can identify areas for improvement and enhance their experience.

Make it easy for your customers to provide feedback with short, quick surveys.

Surprise and Delight Your Customers.

Like enticing your date by sharing your dessert or making them laugh, treat your customers with unexpected gestures. Offer loyalty programs and free samples. Deliver exclusive discounts.

Embrace them as part of your community. Small, personal gestures create lasting relationships and show that you care.

Woo your customers by making their wish your command.

Turn Mistakes into Opportunities.

Even the best dates have awkward moments. When things go wrong, offer a sincere apology. Provide a solution.

Use a blunder as a chance to learn and improve. Owning your mistakes shows accountability and a commitment to make things right.

RELATED ARTICLE: 5 Customer Retention Tactics to Try

7 Ways to Elevate Your Customer Experience

Investing in exceptional customer experience services unlocks the door to customer satisfaction. It’s the key to business growth and success. And don’t worry. Plenty of apps and software are available to help you streamline your strategy.

After you add a dash of your imagination and ideas, you’re on your way to creating your own customer experience. Try some of these tips and watch the positive results pour in.

Create a Fan Wall.

Showcase customer testimonials on your website or social media. Create a dedicated “Fan Wall.” Celebrate their contributions and the individual ways they use your service.

Invite VIPs for Early Access.

Offer exclusive access to new services and discounts. Make your customers feel part of an inner circle. Hold events for loyal customers—they might even make new friends and spread the word.

Offer Behind-the-Scenes Tours.

Invite loyal clients to virtual or in-person tours of your workspace. Introduce them to your team and welcome them to your world. By fostering transparency, you’ll build deeper connections.

Post Clever Quizzes.

Create a weekly quiz on social media. See how many questions your clients can answer about your brand. Many people enjoy solving a quiz, just like playing a word game. It’s a fun way to keep customers engaged with your company without being pushy.

Celebrate Their Birthday.

Everybody likes a gift on their birthday. Offer a special discount or a personalized present if they interact with your service during their birthday week.

Keep the Conversation Going.

Don’t disappear after the first encounter. Instead of sending out generic promotional emails, stay connected with tailored news.

Deliver newsletters with items related to the customer’s interests and past interactions. Did they buy a branded shirt? Suggest your new branded water bottle. Did you unclog their drain? Offer a discount if they invest in a low-flush toilet.

Whether your business is custom cabinets, the best salon in town, or home construction, amaze your customers with your original style. You’ll build a loyal fan base.

Create a Customer Feedback Lottery.

Encourage feedback by making it fun. Enter everyone who contributes feedback in a monthly lottery with prizes. Make it lighthearted and engaging. You’ll gain valuable customer insights while building a warm, welcoming community.

Remember, it’s not only about service—it’s about creating lasting connections.

Customers are the heartbeat that keeps businesses moving. They’re not just numbers or sales. They’re real people looking to connect on a human level. They want to feel valued, heard, and understood.

That’s where customer service comes in.

Welcome to your guide to delivering gold-standard customer service.

Explore why excellent customer service is non-negotiable. Learn about the fundamentals that make up its foundation and discuss key components. And, get practical tips on elevating your customer service game and actionable steps to start improving today.

Every interaction counts, whether you’re answering a call, replying to an email, or greeting someone in person.

Why Is Customer Service Important in Business?

Customer service can make or break your business. It can set you up for years of growth and success or sink your reputation in no time.

Here are key reasons why elevating customer service is so crucial, especially for small businesses:

Boosts Customer Loyalty

Top-quality service makes 88% of customers more likely to buy from you again. Keeping your customers satisfied means they stick around longer and spread the word about their positive experiences.

Shapes Company Reputation

Next-level service talks. Customers share their experiences—good and bad—with friends, family, and colleagues. Both can shape your reputation. If you concentrate on leaving customers with a favorable impression, you boost your potential customer pool without spending extra on marketing.

Reduces Problems

Great customer service solves issues before they escalate. This keeps minor problems from becoming big headaches that can hurt your business.

Increases Revenue

Businesses focused on customer service achieve faster growth. Those leading in customer experience can see a 17% revenue increase in five years, compared to just 3% for those lagging behind.

Sets You Apart

In a crowded market, excellent service makes your business stand out. Eighty percent of customers say the experience a company provides is as crucial as its products or services.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: What Is the Customer Journey? (And How Can Home Services Providers Make It Better?)

In short, good customer service isn’t just a nice afterthought. It’s essential for your business’s success and growth.

The Fundamentals of Customer Service

Let’s bring it back to basics. What are the key concepts you need to understand before you can deliver growth-driving customer service?

Customer Service vs. Customer Support

Many people use these two terms interchangeably. This is not entirely correct. While they are similar in approach, the goals are different.

Here’s what they have in common:

• Both are all about solving problems for your customers.
• They both involve interacting with customers using tools like email, phone, or chat to come to an understanding.
• Effective training is critical for both.

And here’s what’s different:

• Customer service is the big picture. It’s about keeping customers happy all the time, not just when things go wrong.
• Customer support jumps in to fix things or answer questions when there’s a hiccup.
• Customer service is about being one step ahead, making sure customers are smiling before they even know they need help.
• Customer support is the superhero that comes to the rescue.

Customer Needs and Expectations

Genuinely understanding what your customers need and expect from your business is crucial.

Take home renovation, for example. It’s not just about the nuts and bolts. It’s about creating a cozy space for family memories.

That’s the personal difference customers are looking for.

How do you figure out their expectations? Dive into the data. Look at what customers are buying, asking, and saying. Use feedback from your own customers or read reviews on other similar businesses to get a feel for common customer complaints and praises.

Personalized Care

Now, let’s talk about making things personal.

Personalization in business means making your service, product, or marketing fit each customer’s needs or preferences.

It’s like when a cafe remembers your usual order. It shows you’re not just another customer—you’re special. Or, think of it as the difference between getting a birthday card that says “Happy Birthday” and one with a message just for you.

Personalized messaging shows your customers you really know them.

You’ve listened to their wants and needs. You’ve acknowledged their challenges. And you’re ready to adapt your offerings to cater to them.

Increased Customer Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Lifetime Value

Promoting great service adds up to customers who stick around because they love how you treat them.

That’s customer loyalty.

That loyalty is also tied to customer retention, which is how well you keep your customers returning for more.

Once you increase loyalty and retain your customer base, customer lifetime value (CLV) should be considered. CLV is the total value a customer brings to your business over time.

Happy, loyal customers have a higher lifetime value, which is a huge win for your business.

RELATED ARTICLE: 3 Ways to Turn One-Time Customers into Lifetime Customers

6 Key Components of Good Customer Service

Good customer service is like a puzzle. When all the pieces come together, you have the full picture of the customer experience. Your customers are happy, and everything fits perfectly.

Here are six important pieces that contribute to completing your puzzle:

1. Empathy

Empathy means understanding how your customers feel. It’s like putting yourself in their shoes. They feel cared for, and this builds trust.

2. Patience

Sometimes, customers might be frustrated or confused. Give them time to explain their problem without rushing them or making assumptions. Patience makes them feel respected.

3. Active Listening

Active listening is when you really hear what your customers are saying. You’re not just waiting for your turn to talk. When you listen well, it’s easier to have empathy and patience. You can understand where they’re coming from and find the right solution.

4. Problem-Solving

Good customer service isn’t just about being friendly. It’s also about turning a potential problem into an opportunity to create goodwill.

Being a good problem solver means you can think of smart and creative ways to sort out what’s wrong. You can find innovative approaches that make everyone happy.

5. Clear Communication

Always try to communicate in a way that’s easy to understand. Don’t use technical jargon or talk down to customers. You want to make information as accessible as possible to prevent misunderstandings.

6. Adaptability

Sometimes, things just don’t go as planned. Being adaptable means you can change your approach based on what the customer needs at that moment. Flexibility shows you’re focused on helping them—no matter what.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: Offer Better Customer Support With These Communication Channels

5 Tips for Delivering Better Customer Service

Here are a few practical steps to make a big difference in how your customers feel about your service. Taking these tips to heart will help you and your team make each customer’s experience better and more personal.

1. Invest in Team Training

Your team is the face of your business. Give them the tools they need to excel.

Training should cover the basics of good customer service, like being friendly and solving problems.

But don’t stop there. Teach them everything about your products or services so they can answer any question that comes their way with confidence.

2. Create a Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is like a sketch of your typical customer. Here’s what to include:

• Demographic details: Include age, location, job, and income level. These facts help you understand who your customer is on a basic level.
• Interests and preferences: Note what your customers enjoy and value. This could be hobbies, favorite brands, or service preferences, which give insight into how to engage them.
• Challenges and needs: Identify common problems or needs your customers face. Understanding these helps you shape your services to offer the specific solutions they’re looking for.

3. Consistently Collect Customer Feedback.

Feedback from your customers is pure gold. Have your team actively collect feedback with every service.

Digital tools like Listen360 can help you find out what they’re thinking.

But here’s the key: Don’t just collect feedback. Act on it.

If you see a pattern, like many customers asking for the same thing, make a plan to address it.

RELATED ARTICLE: 5 Ways to Quickly Boost Your Customer Feedback Strategy

4. Cultivate a Continuous Improvement Culture.

Good today doesn’t mean good tomorrow. Always look for ways to do better.

Stay open to change and encourage your team to bring new ideas to the table.

To cultivate a continuous improvement culture, start by scheduling brainstorming sessions where everyone can share their ideas and feedback.

Encourage experimentation. Allow team members to try new approaches in a safe environment where learning from mistakes is valued.

Recognize and celebrate both small and big achievements. This reinforces the importance of ongoing improvement and its positive impact on customer service.

5. Use Technology.

Tech can be a game-changer for customer service.

Software can manage tasks like scheduling appointments and collecting feedback easily enough. Some solutions, called customer relationship management software, can even help automate customer communications, segment your audience to inform decision-making, and more.

What’s more, artificial intelligence (AI) can help you do everything from creating tailored messaging to making your customer service more efficient.

According to a study by Mailchimp, 88% of marketers believe using automation and AI is crucial to meet customer expectations and stay competitive.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: How to Get Customers to Leave Reviews for Your Local Home Services Business

How to Start Enhancing Your Customer Service Experience Right Now

Boosting your customer service can start with a few simple changes. Here are six effective tips you can put into action immediately:

Set Clear Service Standards

Define exactly what excellent service means in your business. Whether it’s speedy replies or always using the customer’s name, clear guidelines help your team deliver consistently great service.

Improve Response Times

Customers appreciate fast answers. Aim to respond to inquiries and concerns quickly. Monitor all of your customer interaction platforms—email, phone calls, or social media—and follow up with any issues that arise.

Use Customer Service Software

With the right software, you can track customer interactions. This ensures no request goes unanswered. It helps keep everything organized and improves efficiency.

Empower Your Team

Allow your staff to resolve issues without always needing approval. It speeds up problem-solving and shows customers that you trust your team.

Follow Up After Service

Check-in with your customers after you’ve helped them. A quick message to confirm their issue was resolved shows you care about their satisfaction.

Personalize Your Service

Tailor your service to each customer’s needs and preferences. Use information from previous interactions and customize your solutions. Personal touches make customers feel valued.

It can be overwhelming trying to make every customer’s experience exceptional. When your business is spread out over 20 or more locations, it’s even harder.

You want every customer to leave happy, but with so much going on, where do you start?

The answer is right here.

Improving customers’ feelings about your service doesn’t have to be a puzzle. There are simple steps you can take to make things better—not just for your customers but for your team, too.

This means less stress for everyone and more happy customers coming back.

In this article, we’ll examine what customer experience improvement really means. You’ll learn why it’s important for business growth and success.

We’ll share easy tips to help you and your team make big strides without getting swamped. Plus, we’ve got some quick actions you can start on today to see immediate results.

Let’s make your customers’ experiences something they can’t stop talking about.

Understanding Customer Experience Improvement

Customer experience improvement is key to unlocking your business’s potential. It’s also crucial for ensuring sustainable success.

What is customer experience improvement?

It’s all about giving every person a smooth and enjoyable experience from the moment they discover you until they become loyal customers.

Key parts of your customer experience improvement strategy should include:

• Defined objectives: Set specific targets, like increasing repeat business or getting more positive feedback.
• Metrics for success: Use metrics to see if customer satisfaction increases. Are more customers returning? Are they recommending you to others?
• Customer-first approach: Really listen to customer feedback. What makes them happy? What could be better? Use this feedback to improve.
• Continuous customer experience improvement mindset: Always be on the lookout for ways to make your customers’ experiences even better. It’s an ongoing process.

Almost 90% of consumers believe a great customer experience matters as much as the service provided. You can differentiate your business by focusing on creating outstanding customer experiences.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: Communication and Customer Service Skills That Minimize Customer Problems

Why Focus on Customer Experience Improvement?

It seems far too simple a strategy to yield such exceptional results. So, why focus on making customers happy?

Let’s look at some ways customer experience improvement benefits your business:

Keeps Customers Coming Back.

When people have a good experience, they’re more likely to use your services again. Happy customers often become loyal ones, which means more steady business.

Protects Your Brand.

Did you know 52% of customers might leave you for another business after just one bad experience? That’s why it’s crucial to delight them so they have positive things to say about you.

Gets You Ahead.

With 80% of business leaders planning to spend more on customer experience improvement, it’s clear that this is the way to win. You don’t want to be left behind.

Saves Money.

Attracting new customers can be expensive. But if you keep your current customers happy, they might bring in new ones for you.

Increases Revenue.

Personalizing how you treat customers pays dividends. It can make your marketing more effective and even boost your revenue by 5 to 15%.

6 Tips to Simplify Your Customer Experience Improvement

Customer experience improvement can be simpler than you think.

Here are six tips to enhance your customer experience in manageable, realistic, and meaningful ways:

1. Map Out the Customer Journey.

Think about the steps your customers must take from learning about you to buying your service. This is your customer’s journey.

By understanding this journey, you can make each step better and more personal.

Why it helps: When you understand the customer journey, you can see where customers might need extra support. You can use this insight to prioritize certain steps for improvement.

Example: Customers often report getting confused on your website when trying to book a service.

By mapping the journey, you see where they get stuck. You can then make that part of your website clearer, helping customers book jobs more easily.

2. Optimize the Digital Customer Experience.

Your digital customer experience includes your website, social media, and emails. Since many people find businesses online, making these easy and enjoyable to use can make a significant difference.

Why it helps: Improving your digital experience removes obstacles and frustrations for your customers.

It ensures they can find what they need without confusion. Everything they see is correct and up-to-date. And there are no annoying delays like slow website loading times.

This smooth online journey makes customers feel respected and valued.

It’s about offering a seamless, hassle-free experience.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: Offer Better Customer Support With These Communication Channels

Example: Customers might feel ignored if they find it difficult to get answers on your social media. But if you are active and helpful on social media, you show customers you care and are ready to help. This builds trust and makes them happier with your service.

3. Create a Knowledge Base or Help Center

A knowledge base or help center is a library of answers online. It has information about your services, how to solve common problems, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Why it helps: This online library lets your customers find answers independently. This means your team has more time to help with bigger problems. It makes your service faster and delivers higher quality.

Example: Imagine a customer can’t figure out how to use a feature of your service. Instead of waiting to talk to someone, they find the answer in your knowledge base.

They’re happy because it was quick. Better yet, your team can focus on helping someone else.

4. Collect Regular Feedback from Customers.

Regularly asking your customers what they think can give you useful information. You can use surveys or feedback forms to hear what they have to say.

Why it helps: This feedback tells you what’s working and what’s not. It shows you exactly where to make things better.

This information makes improving customer experience more straightforward. You know what to focus on—no more guesswork.

Example: You’ve noticed many customers complain that the checkout process on your website is confusing. With this feedback, you know you need to make checkout easier.

You make the changes. Now, customers are happier because buying from you is simpler.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: Why Customer Satisfaction Surveys Will Help Your Business Thrive 

5. Aim for Consistent Branding.

Keep a uniform look and feel for your business across all platforms. Consistency makes it easy for customers to recognize you.

This means using the same colors, logos, and style across your website, flyers, and social media.

Why it helps: When everything looks the same, customers know it’s you immediately. Familiarity makes them feel more at ease.

Plus, you don’t have to make new designs all the time. You can use what you have, which saves time and effort.

Example: Say a customer sees your ad on social media and then visits your website. If both look the same, the customer knows they’re in the right place.

They trust you more. And you didn’t have to make a whole new design for your website.

6. Leverage Automation.

Using tools to complete tasks automatically can be a huge time-saver. Here are some examples:

• AI chatbots: They can talk to customers, answer simple questions, and help them find what they need anytime.
• Thank-you messages: After someone buys something or uses your service, they can get a quick message of thanks. It makes them feel appreciated.
• Feedback surveys: Customers can automatically get a short survey asking how it went.
• Appointment reminders: These emails or texts can be sent to remind customers about upcoming appointments.

Why it helps: Automation means you don’t forget to send important messages. Everything goes out on time—every time.

This makes your service reliable and lets your team focus on other important work.

Example: A customer books a service with you. An automatic email goes out to remind them the day before.

The customer appreciates the reminder, and your team didn’t have to remember to send it. Everyone is happy.

FROM ONE OF OUR PARTNERS: How Is Your Customer Experience Track Record Impacting Your Business? 

Top Takeaway Tips for Simplifying Your Customer Experience Improvement

Here are some quick tips you can start using right away to make your customers happier:

Define Your Ideal Customer.

Know who you’re trying to reach. What do they like? What do they need from you? You could even create a detailed buyer persona.

Identify Roadblocks in the Customer Journey.

Find places where customers get stuck or frustrated. Look for ways to make these spots easier to navigate.

Consider Which Elements of Customer Service Take Up the Most Time.

See which tasks are eating up your team’s time. Think about how you can do these tasks faster or easier.

You might automate emails. Or possibly try scheduling your social media posts. Delegating automation frees up resources for growth-driving work.

Flag Opportunities to Automate.

Find things you can do automatically, like sending thank-you emails or appointment reminders. Make a plan to automate these. Start small to make sure it works well. Automation should not detract from the customer experience.

How to Get Your Priorities on Track 

Overseeing a network of franchises can feel like herding cats at times. Each franchise owner or manager has their own concept about how to run the franchise, while the corporate office has its preferred way. Sometimes the methods align; sometimes they don’t. 

But if you want your franchise network managers to be successful, there needs to be a clear list of priorities that everyone can get behind. The challenge, though, is deciding what those priorities should be and then balancing them appropriately so you can stay on track.  

Here’s a closer look at how you can prioritize effectively so all your children’s services program franchises can thrive. 

Choosing the Right Priorities in Your Children’s Services Program 

Before you can balance priorities, you need to settle on what they are. Easier said than done, right? With only 22% of employees in the U.S. agreeing their leaders have a clear direction for the organizations they work for, there’s plenty of doubt to overcome. 

The reason why prioritizing is challenging is that every business is a complex ecosystem of ideas, processes, and relationships. At the local franchise level, that ecosystem gets even more complex when you take into account varying customer needs that are location- or region-specific. Then there’s the fact that franchise managers already have a lot on their plates. It’s not always easy for them to know what to focus on to reach that next level of success.

Here at Listen360, we’ve spent years partnering with franchise networks like yours in the children’s services industry. Based on our experience, we recommend the following business priorities as a place to start:  

• Build a strong brand 
• Deliver exceptional customer service across all franchises 
• Use technology to build efficiencies into your business 
• Stay on top of research and changes within your industry 
• Create and execute a strategic marketing plan both at the corporate and local level 
• Ensure compliance with local and regional government regulations 

Once you’ve determined the priorities that make the most sense for your children’s services franchise, and the order in which you’d like to prioritize them, the next step is to figure out how to balance them. 

6 Tips for Balancing Your Children’s Program Priorities 

Setting priorities doesn’t mean they’ll automatically be followed. It takes time and commitment to see them through, and along the way, you may need to make some adjustments. 

Use the following tips as a guide to help corporate and franchise managers balance priorities, so you can achieve optimal results over time and ensure the end customer will benefit. 

1. Apply resources based on priority

This may seem obvious, but it’s helpful to reinforce this idea upfront: Portion out your resources based on your hierarchy of priorities. Even the largest corporate business with tons of resources at its disposal still needs to apply those resources strategically. So in this case, the highest priority gets the bulk of the effort and resources, followed by the second-highest priority, and so on down the list. 

2. Weigh new ideas against your priorities

New ideas are fantastic. But over half (54%) of executives struggle to align their innovation strategy with their business strategy. If the new idea or initiative takes away critical resources or requires you to put more resources into a lower-priority goal, you may need to reconsider. To stick to your priorities, think about holding off on the idea for a while, dropping it altogether, or finding a simpler, less resource-heavy way to achieve it.  

3. Stay flexible and agile

That being said, things can change quickly in business. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that one of your lower priorities could suddenly become a top priority based on any number of factors in your business, the industry, or the market. One of the best skills you can cultivate in your business is the ability to identify when a pivot is needed and flex appropriately to accommodate it. 

4. Hire a skilled team 

Following your priorities effectively means you might need to hire new employees with specific skills. You may need to expand your marketing team, or create a new technology team from the ground up. With your team in place, make sure you’re transparent about what you’re prioritizing and why, and then ask for their input. As one expert recently explained: “Engagement rises when employees take an active role in defining their goals and see the connection and link between their goals and the larger company’s purpose.” 

5. Categorize urgent vs. important activities

Sometimes the most urgent items aren’t actually the most important — and you can find yourself easily distracted from top priorities when you drop everything to deal with the urgent stuff. Have a system in place for being able to decide what’s an immediate but temporary fire (urgent) and what’s critical now and over the long term (important) so you don’t needlessly waste time and attention. 

6. Regularly check in with franchise customers

The end customer provides a great temperature check on whether your priorities are having an impact on the customer experience. One way to check in with franchise customers is through Listen360’s Net Promoter Score (NPS®) surveys and other customer feedback methods that measure customer loyalty. With a simple NPS® survey, you can ask one question to find out how franchise customers feel about your overall brand and/or service, which can further inform your business strategy and priorities. 

Get Started with Listen360  

Getting clear about what to prioritize helps all your franchises turn into top performers. To ensure your business priorities positively impact the customer experience, consider Listen360’s customer engagement platform.  

Backed by an experienced team, Listen360 can help you survey and collect important customer data and make smart business decisions that keep customers coming back.  

For more information, contact us today and we’ll be happy to chat.

Use Feedback to Retain Customers  

If you want to grow your children’s services programs, you need to acquire new customers. But you also need to impress them enough to keep them coming back. The way to do this? Give customers an amazing experience — every time.  

The challenge is, how do you really know if the experience you’re delivering is amazing? Your franchisees work hard to maintain good relationships with customers and ensure quality offerings. But if you’re not sure what customers are really thinking and whether your brand is meeting their expectations, then it’s harder to hit that next level of success — both at the corporate and franchise level. Instead, customers may come and go but never stick around. And you may never know why. 

Customer feedback is one of the best ways to engage with customers and figure out how to boost their experience with your brand. Here’s a closer look at how important it is to gather customer feedback through Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) surveys, the role feedback plays in business and franchise growth, and how technology is central to effectively using customer feedback.  

The Importance of Customer Feedback in Children’s Services Franchises 

Children’s services franchises have an important job to do: please parents and delight kids. But they’re also doing this in a competitive ecosystem in which parents and kids have a lot of options to choose from. One center may be conveniently located, another may be the most affordable, and a third may have that super-cool playground. So what makes them choose your business — or not? 

Whether your business provides daycare, early childhood education and learning, or physical development and play, you need to know if your programs and offerings are on target. Are kids getting what they need? Are parents happy with the results? Do the families see value in returning? 

Asking for and analyzing customer feedback with NPS® surveys is a critical step in understanding the overall customer experience — what’s working well, what isn’t, and which aspects of the business could benefit from updates and improvements. At the end of the day, 83% of companies that think customer happiness is important are able to grow their revenue. That means it’s worth it to make a concerted effort to gather and take action on customer feedback. 

How Customer Feedback Leads to Business and Franchise Growth 

If you want to prioritize business growth, customer feedback is an important tool for doing so. As McKinsey states, “A strategy that enhances customer care and deepens engagement, effectively shifting customer care from a cost center to a profit center, is essential.” 

Here’s how customer feedback helps you engage with customers and build the kind of lasting, loyal relationships with them that can enable business growth. 

Surface areas of improvement 

It’s wonderful to receive positive feedback, but negative feedback is sometimes more rewarding because it shows you exactly where you need to improve. When customers are honest with you about what they don’t like, think of it as valuable information pointing the way to necessary changes that can make your business more profitable.  

Know what to prioritize 

Running a franchise means giving attention and resources to a multitude of tasks and challenges every day. Customer feedback focuses the franchise’s attention and resources on the things that truly matter to customers. When the franchise prioritizes the customer, they’re effectively giving customers more of what they want — leading customers to spend more in return.  

Increase customer retention 

Acquiring new customers is important, but so is retaining them. When you gather customer feedback, you’re giving yourself the knowledge you need to keep existing customers happy and increase customer retention. You can enlist a variety of ways — such as communication campaigns and loyalty programs — to show them how much you value their patronage. 

Improve referral rate 

Loyal customers have the added bonus of talking to their friends. When they’re happy, they refer others in their network to your business, which means you can bring in new customers just by caring for the ones you already have. 

Spur innovation and new offerings 

Listening to your customers and understanding their experiences opens up doors to innovation. You’re able to see how your customers might benefit from a whole new offering that your competitors don’t have or that meets an emerging need. Even better? When you develop a new offering, your existing customers are 50% more likely to try it. 

The Role of Technology in Customer Feedback 

Technology is key to boosting customer happiness effectively because of its ability to efficiently capture, centralize, process, and analyze information without adding administrative burden. Adopting a customer engagement platform like Listen360 enables you to: 

• Continuously gather and actively listen to customer feedback 24/7 
• Capture feedback through NPS® surveys and other methods  
• Reach customers through a variety of channels, including email, the web portal, phone calls, and interactive voice response (IVR)  
• Get real-time alerts when feedback comes in so you can quickly respond 
• Use monitoring and historical information to follow up, ensuring customer issues are addressed and resolved 
• Calculate NPS® by brand or location and track other metrics and key performance data to understand business impact 

With technology-enabled customer feedback, you’re able to uncover high-impact opportunities for your business, delight your customers, and cultivate customer loyalty and retention over time — in ways that are much easier than relying on manual feedback methods at the franchise or corporate level. 

Get Started with Listen360 

Building customer relationships, gathering feedback, and retaining the customers you acquire takes effort and focus. To start off on the right foot, consider Listen360’s customer engagement platform. Backed by an experienced team, Listen360 can help you survey and collect important customer data and make smart business decisions that keep customers coming back.  

For more information, contact us today and we’ll be happy to chat. 

Customer feedback helps children’s services franchises measure how happy customers are with their company’s products, services, and capabilities. It’s a reflection of how well a company is received by those who use its services.  

Taking the time to collect customer feedback, both good and bad, is important because it is a demonstration of how much your customers enjoy your services — and how likely they are to keep using them.  

5 Ways to Collect Customer Feedback   

If you manage a chain of children’s services or program franchises, you know how important it is to accurately assess the experience of your customers. Measuring successes and failures early and often will help you identify customer pain points and solve problems before they become overwhelming.  

Collecting customer feedback can have a number of benefits: 

• Provide details on what makes your children’s program work. 
• Get real feedback on what customers don’t like. 
• Understand why customers return to use your services. 
• Immediately identify what problems are a priority. 
• Helps to plan for the future. 

 Let’s look at a few effective ways you can gather information from your customers. 

Customer Surveys 

Conducting customer surveys at regular intervals can help your children’s services franchise to gain the perspective of your customers and reveal patterns that will help you to determine business priorities.   

When developing a survey for your children’s services franchise, be sure to set clear objectives. What is it that you need to know to help solve an urgent problem? Create a set of core questions that will apply across all franchises, then get the individual franchises involved in creating questions that are more specific to their location. Keeping the questions short and simple increases the likelihood of receiving useful responses. 

Social Media Listening 

Incorporating a social media listening strategy will give your children’s services franchise valuable data to keep business booming. Why? Because it helps you monitor and analyze what your current and potential customers are saying about your business across social media channels.  

One way to implement social media listening is to list hashtags related to your franchise and see what people are saying about your business in real-time. You can also use keywords to participate in the conversation that is going on about your brand online. What you learn from these interactions can tell you a lot about how your customers use your children’s services program. 

Net Promoter Score Surveys 

A Net Promoter Score (NPS®) survey measures customer loyalty among your child care program franchises and gives you an idea about which customers will be repeat customers, as well as brand ambassadors. In the NPS®, customers are asked on a scale of one to 10, how likely they are to recommend a business. This is followed by an open-ended question that lets the customer explain in their own words why they answered the way they did.   

One of the benefits of an NPS® survey score is that you can immediately see in what areas your franchise needs improvement. You can use this information to figure out what tactics you can repeat to create more customer advocates — the ones who use word of mouth to spread the good word about how valuable your children’s services are. 

Customer Reviews and Ratings 

Online sites like Google Reviews, Yelp, and Facebook have become essential research tools for consumers interested in children’s programs in their area. These review sites are an extension of word-of-mouth marketing that has such a strong influence on your potential customers.  

It’s natural for customers to want to know what other parents have to say about a children’s program or center before they enroll their children. Online reviews give your franchise much-needed credibility and social proof. Furthermore, these sites often give good feedback about where you can improve, which is just as important as positive feedback. 

Sales and Retention Metrics 

Sales metrics measure the growth or decline of your business and can include the number of sales made during busy seasons vs sales made during slow months. Knowing this data informs your children’s program teams to know what to expect throughout the year.  

It’s important for each children’s services provider to define what success looks like for them. While there may be some guidance from the parent franchise, allowing each franchise to have an opportunity to define success for themselves gives them more independence. Measuring data at regular intervals throughout the year allows each franchise to make strong decisions about its future. 

Ways to Keep Your Child Programs Services Franchise Customers Happy 

While each children’s services franchise is unique, there are some customer experience goals that are universal. Research shows that 42% of customers are willing to pay for a more friendly and welcoming experience. This leaves plenty of room for your franchise to think about where they can start to make a positive impression. 

Take a look at how your franchise can take the first step toward happier customers. 

1. Create customer experience goals 

Knowing your customer journey is important to creating a stellar customer experience. This includes goals related to repeat purchases or increases in subscriber or membership renewals. These are goals that can be numerically measured so that it is clear whether there is an improvement.  

2. Improve customer support 

Rather than striving only to meet industry standards, take the time to figure out what stellar customer service looks like for your particular children’s program. Teach your team to be solution-oriented so that the children and parents who utilize your services will rave to their friends and family about the gem of a program they’ve found.  

3. Get to know your customers as people 

When it comes to the care of children, people always appreciate a personal touch. This can include remembering first names, making friendly conversation with a smile, or sending out emails with real names rather than just signed by the “Customer Service Team.”  

Get Started with Listen360 

If your children’s services franchise needs support with building positive customer relations, gathering customer feedback, and improving your customer retention rate, then it’s time to consider using technology to help you with your goals.  

A customer engagement platform like Listen360 can help your franchise to collect important data from all your customers to help you create a marketing strategy that encourages them to come back from year to year.  

In today’s changing marketplace, children’s services franchises need every advantage to stay ahead. You can get a better sense of how to help by collecting feedback regularly and using that information in your decision-making process.  Here are some ways children’s programs can gather customer feedback to grow the franchise. 

How to Collect Customer Feedback 

A consistent customer feedback system will help you stay in touch with your franchises and assess their evolving needs. 

Surveys  

Surveys let you proactively collect feedback from franchises on a regular or ad hoc basis. There are several types of surveys, like Net Promoter Score surveys, that give you more specific information about the kind of success you want to measure. With surveys, you can ask specific questions regarding a franchise’s success, struggles, or other areas of needed support. Email allows you to send surveys to numerous people and franchises at one time, saving time, money, and energy.  

Social Media Monitoring  

One of the most potent sources of feedback that child services franchisors may forget about is social media. While social media can be used by the franchisor to broadcast the benefits of investing in a well-known brand, it can also be used to monitor what franchisees are saying about their success online. Companies may need to have a full-time social media manager or use monitoring software to monitor the feeds of several franchisees.  

Reviews and Ratings  

Support your franchisees by setting up a system to collect reviews and ratings. Franchise business reviews, as part of a consistent marketing strategy, can influence online brand reputation, leading to long-term, sustainable market growth.  

There are a number of ways to help your franchisees collect customer reviews. One common way is sending an electronic form or survey via email or social media. Another is to remind franchise customers to utilize sites like Google Reviews, Yelp, or the Facebook business page to talk about their experience.  

Customer Support Interactions and Chat  

Software tools can collect customer feedback during interactions with customer support agents and chatbots. This process can be automated, monitored, and analyzed over any given length of time. The responses can let you know the common questions customers are asking, their challenges, and help you identify ways to improve the customer experience. 

How to Analyze Customer Feedback 

In order to analyze customer feedback, a franchise has to go through several steps to categorize the feedback they are getting from customers.   

1. Put all your data from all feedback sources in one place. This makes it easier to know what you have to work with. 
2. Categorize your data. Start to notice if there are any patterns in themes or topics that start to come to the surface. 
3. Divide each comment into positive, negative, and neutral sub-categories. This makes it easier to see what your customers are saying.  
4. Find the root cause of successes and failures. Is there an employee that the customers seem to love and mention by name? Is there a particular place in the customer journey where service falls short? 
5. Make a plan to address the successes and failures. 

Best Practices for Analyzing Customer Feedback 

Companies can support their children’s services franchises by identifying patterns and trends across the industry as well as within individual franchise businesses. There are several different types of surveys that can be used to collect information. One popular method is the Net Promoter Score (NPS®),  a customer success metric used to measure customer loyalty and brand health as evidenced by revenue growth. Common questions include:  

• What franchisee tools helped you the most in getting your business started? 
• How likely are you to recommend others to join this franchise? 
• What do you need to be a more successful franchise? 

Open-ended questions are often used to allow the respondent an opportunity to express their experience without being coerced into an answer.  

The NPS® survey is a cost-effective communication feedback tool that can be distributed every three to six months to give the corporate office metrics on the performance of each franchise. Software platforms such as Listen360 can give an overall score on how franchisors are doing in the area of customer services. Are they creating champions from their customers? Are their customers largely apathetic? Or are there a large number of complaints? All of this information can be used to create an action plan at both the corporate and franchisee levels. 

While your customer feedback may vary among your franchises, there are some best practices for analyzing it.  

• Invest in ongoing, consistent marketing to get consistent, actionable customer feedback data. 
• Be consistent in collecting data across franchises for an up-to-date picture of the customer experience.  
• Involve cross-functional teams in all decision-making to ensure that all voices are heard. 
• Use a customer-focused approach that involves tactics like social listening tools can make it easier to analyze customer feedback.  

Get Started with Listen360 

Customer feedback can tell you a lot about your child care program franchises — if you have time to gather the information and look at the data. If your franchise business needs assistance in gathering feedback and analyzing the results to better serve its franchisees, then it’s time to utilize a customer engagement platform like Listen360.   

The tools within Listen360 can help your children’s services franchise business gather feedback and make changes in real-time. Start using hard data to help your franchise businesses make smarter marketing decisions. 

Knowing how to acquire new members is essential to running a successful fitness franchise. However, do you know what makes your members stay versus what makes them run to a competing franchise? Member feedback via NPS® surveys can tell you — if you know how to make sense of the data to change the minds of unhappy members and convert them to loyal members.  

Learn how to analyze member feedback to make data-driven decisions to drive the success of your fitness franchise marketing plan. The member experience is guided by reviews from other member feedback and especially negative feedback. Member churn is a natural part of running any business, but using a net promoter score survey can help improve member loyalty.

A high score in net promoter score surveys will create a better member perception of your brand loyalty.

The Importance of a Net Promoter Score for Fitness Franchise Leaders

The member feedback loop is a member experience strategy that is meant to enhance and improve your fitness franchise services based on member reviews. This will give actionable insights to help turnover unenthusiastic members and bring light to negative reviews to improve the member base.

The loop begins when your fitness franchise sends an NPS® survey and members respond. Your franchise analyzes the feedback and makes the desired changes. You then communicate the changes to the member, closing the feedback loop. This can go from survey responses to follow-up questions to determine the primary reason a member’s experience was negative or positive.

Your fitness franchise should pay attention to who is using your fitness services and how outside forces like the economy may affect when, where, and how they go to the gym, this is the natural member churn. By focusing on continuous improvement and sending regular NPS® surveys to gauge member loyalty, you ensure that even the smallest changes make your fitness franchise better, easier, faster, and more profitable. Qualitative feedback can help your member service team implement more beneficial marketing campaigns, track performance correctly, and help gain insight into what the member face.

Well-planned NPS® surveys can help your franchise collect valuable data for your member support team to make necessary adjustments to help existing members stay happy members, and find a target audience. Knowing how members from varying demographics like gender, age, and location rate their loyalty can influence your decisions when considering adjusting services. You can also learn what services are the most useful to your members and which ones can be eliminated from your menu.

6 Ways to Make Data-Driven Decisions for Your Franchise Network

Determine Your Key Performance Indicators for Member Loyalty

What is it that will make your fitness franchise successful? How will you know once you’ve achieved that goal? Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are quantifiable measures of performance over a specified period to meet an explicit goal.

Having your KPIs in place when analyzing NPS® results is important because it gives your fitness franchise a goal to aim for, like a certain NPS® score, better member sentiment, or an increase in actionable feedback to work on. Measuring data without an understanding of what you consider to be a success will compromise your ability to make action-oriented decisions, which is why understanding NPS® feedback and NPS® analysis is a key factor into a good NPS®. A good net promoter score question will target a certain response to look at in the NPS® analysis.

Collect and Organize Member Feedback

Sort through and compile the kinds of member feedback you have across franchises and place all collected data in one central place. In addition to NPS® data, look at all the places where your members leave you feedback, including online reviews, member experience surveys, member support team reviews, and social media. These additional feedback avenues will help you narrow down the meaning of your NPS® results so you can decide where to start making improvements first, so make every survey question meaningful. Also, note what detractors respond with to any of the questions in the survey results to try and raise a bad NPS® score. New members will look for a net promoter score that is higher than lower.

Use Technology to Categorize, Slice, and Dice the Data from your NPS® Score

Once you’ve collected the data, it’s time to decide how you want to evaluate it. Do you want to segment it by region? Demographics? Years each franchise has been in business? There are many ways to use the data you have in order to understand what factors are contributing to member loyalty. List the areas you want to focus on and organize the data accordingly. These data points are worth noting to figure out how to have a good overall NPS® score and gain points in your NPS® rating and NPS® analysis.

Compare the Results Across Several Metrics

Now that the data has been categorized, start to compare it across franchises. Comparisons can be made by location, region, franchise size, services offered, etc. This is where the data tells a story about how your members experience your fitness services franchise-wide and why they are loyal to some franchises and not others. A member experience management platform is a great way to organize NPS® survey responses.

Determine High-Priority Areas of Improvement

You can’t do everything at once. Decide your business priorities by revisiting your KPIs. Did you meet your company goals? Where are you experiencing the most success? What are your members saying about what needs to be improved? Use your KPIs to help you determine your highest priority areas of improvement, budget increases or decreases, and employee training to keep up employee health, and make sure to track any NPS® response that leads to a better NPS® score. 

Document Areas Where You Need More Data

Every time you conduct a survey, you’ll discover more areas where you’ll need to collect more data. Do you want to know more about member motivation to use your fitness services? Do your members need childcare? How much are they willing to spend on these additional services? These are the kinds of questions that can be built into future member feedback strategies and show up the next time you calculate NPS®. Ask specific questions in your net promoter survey to get valuable information on your target market or member loyalty overall.

Improve Your Member Feedback Analysis with Listen360

Knowing what member feedback is available and having a detailed plan to understand what it means can make or break your fitness franchise. When you know how to calculate net promoter score and analyze member feedback, your fitness franchise is in a better position to build lasting member relationships. Listen360 is a member engagement platform that can help you collect important data about your members and make sound decisions about how to keep them coming back and improve your member experience and NPS® scores. 

It’s common for fitness franchises to use NPS® surveys to learn about the loyalty of the people who use their services and the overall member experience. Unfortunately, some companies don’t put in the effort to figure out how to conduct surveys properly.

Net promoter score surveys are a great way to go about measuring member loyalty and member service metrics in an easy way for your member base to give member insights. This is important to foster brand loyalty and make sure existing members stay in your member sentiment. Any company can get quick feedback from a survey, but being able to use NPS® results as a way to have business growth is what competitive offerings new members want.

 Collecting member feedback via NPS® surveys involves more than making up a few questions and sending out an email. When done properly, a good survey can help your fitness franchise discover what keeps your members coming back and help you make better business decisions as a result. Consumer behavior is measurable with most NPS® surveys and can be key in making unenthusiastic members and unhappy members become loyal members.

The Cost of Inaccurate Feedback on Your Net Promoter Score

Member feedback is a way for your fitness business to measure if you’re on the road to keeping happy members. But how do you know that the feedback you’re getting is accurate? Inaccurate data leaves you with information that is false, unreliable, or ambiguous. Worse, inaccurate data can lead you to inaccurate conclusions about your members and what they expect from your business. This can attribute too much blame on the natural member churn, or discourage honest feedback from members.

By improving the accuracy of member feedback, your fitness franchise gains a foundation by which to understand who your members are, and how to better serve the target market. It’s difficult to build a thriving business when you make guesses about what made them choose your fitness franchise over others. Quality member service builds member trust and improves member loyalty. Referral marketing and using the member’s experience in a net promoter score question can improve NPS® scores and create actionable feedback that your support team can improve upon.

Recent research shows that 80% of consumers consider trust when making a buying decision. Taking the time to build the right system for collecting and managing member feedback will save your fitness business time and money and help you make good decisions on how to serve your members and actively promote to members. A carefully curated NPS® question is the best way to improve member experience so the NPS® survey is helpful for both member and the company.

Active vs. Passive Feedback and Member Loyalty

Collecting active feedback involves reaching out to the member directly to seek their opinions on your fitness franchise services. This can be helpful because it’s an opportunity to connect directly to the member to collect information that is targeted, contextual, and specific. Negative feedback is just as important as positive and is the primary reason a business will change a factor of their business. Negative reviews will lower the NPS® calculation but can help better the member perception of your business when addressed correctly.

Passive feedback, on the other hand, is feedback that is initiated by the member. This may look like the member using social media to express their pleasure or grievances about using your services. This is also beneficial for you as a business because it allows the member to express themselves freely. This might include negative words about your business, so reaching out about a member’s answer can improve member loyalty and help create a good feedback loop between members and the business. A member experience management platform can also help elongate the member lifecycle, and higher net promoter scores to predict member loyalty and help your member service team measure loyalty more effectively.

Both types of feedback help you gain a better view and measure loyalty — but active feedback is what you’ll need to get accurate results from net promoter score surveys. For even greater accuracy in your surveys, follow the six best practices below to improve member experience and loyalty at your business.

6 NPS® Feedback Best Practices

1. Define terminology, scales, and rankings

Every survey has its own terminology it uses to describe the NPS® score system. In NPS® surveys, members can choose a score of zero to 10 to indicate how likely they are to recommend your business to others. While you cannot share how the ranking system works regarding detractors, passives, and promoters, you should indicate that zero is the least likely to recommend your business and 10 is the most likely to recommend your business. This is what goes into a net promoter score calculation.

It seems straightforward, but it never hurts to address a potential miscommunication in a member’s journey. Communication can help a member’s loyalty score increase and improve the way a member interacts online regarding your business. Being attentive to members will help a low score improve and gain more insight into a typical member.

2. Make surveys easy to complete and submit

The beauty of an NPS® survey is that it is only two questions — very easy for any member to complete. But you can make the process easier by automating survey distribution, so the question pops up while they are using or thinking about your product or service. If they can quickly access the survey and answer it — without having to log in, respond to an email, or click a series of links — you’ll increase the likelihood of getting more members to respond. And the more responses you get, the more accurate your final NPS® score will be. Survey results are higher when the survey is easily accessible to members and when follow-up questions are concise, as well as any NPS® question.

3. Ensure you have a large enough sample size

Determining how big your sample size should be is important to get the best results. For example, the members who use your fitness facilities in the afternoon may be a different kind of member from the early morning or after-work crowd, and you want to be sure you get responses from each of these groups. During the survey planning phase, it’s important to devise a strategy for getting the most responses possible with the widest range of demographics so the results accurately represent your member population. NPS® data should be a well-rounded estimate of your member base to get the most accurate net promoter score and overall picture of your member experience.

4. Be careful with incentives

It’s common for businesses to offer an incentive to those who complete a survey. These can be a referral program or can be anything from a free healthy workout snack to being entered in a drawing for a free month of gym access. While incentives are fun and will likely increase the number of surveys you receive, they have the potential to compromise accuracy if they aren’t done well. Remember, the point is to collect accurate feedback, not receive the highest number of poor survey responses in the shortest amount of time. This will not give accurate data on the member;s effort or response rates, nor the most accurate net promoter score.

5. Consider survey frequency

Members are often happy to share their experiences by offering feedback. However, there is such a thing as survey fatigue. Consider how often you need to ask members to fill out a survey. You’ll want some kind of regular frequency so you can compare your results over time. However, you may have a use for a relational NPS® survey that can be distributed on-demand versus a transactional NPS® survey that is sent following a specific event or transaction, such as a monthly membership. A net promoter score survey doesn’t need to be sent too frequently, and if overdone will likely lead to fewer members responding, and an inaccurate way that it will calculate net promoter score.

6. Practice member feedback aftercare

Members appreciate when their feedback makes a difference in your fitness business. Be sure to thank them for their response and notify them about new services or changes throughout the business. Letting them know you take their input seriously encourages your members to want to engage in the next survey, as they know that their time leads to real change. An NPS® survey is a key factor in your business growth, so make sure to help your member journey benefit from the responses.

Get started with Listen360 to get the Best Net Promoter Score NPS®!

If you are looking to build a better relationship with your fitness franchise members, then consider adding Listen360 to your marketing plan. Our digital member engagement platform helps your fitness business to gather quality member feedback so that you can retain more members. With Listen360, you can be sure that you’ll have the right system that helps you to make better marketing decisions and have a successful net promoter system in place to improve your NPS® score.