Consistency is the ultimate proof that your franchise is accomplishing what it’s set out to be. The bottom line is, that if your franchise is not able to provide the same customer experience, product and service across all of your locations, you are failing to live up to customer expectations. And once you have battled the price war, optimized your supply chain, and tweaked your business model to perfection, it is down to one thing: customer experience. Michael Dell said it best: “Customer experience is the next competitive battle ground”. Regardless if you run a retail operation with three outlets in the same town, or 20 restaurants across state-lines, getting it right, every time, in every location is key. Here are three simple things to get consistency moving in the right direction:

• Make sure your operations manual is up to snuff – what I mean by that is to take a completely digital approach. Don’t resort to PDF of your old binder manual – consider a flexible approach that lets your staff search, easily digest and execute on the information provided. WorkMap is a great method to your operations manuals in order, and the method was developed specifically for people in franchise and retail.
• Train your staff on branding and identity – A staff member who understands your value proposition, your brand strategy, and your visual identity, is also able to convey what you want them to convey, to your end-customers. Of course it helps to put an identity library on your Intranet, packed with everything from details on how to design a sign for the store, to designing a coupon mailer.
• Provide access to vendor agreements and discounts – If the food on your menu does not taste the same from one location to the other, it may be that that ingredients are being sourced from different vendors. Make sure your locations are tapped into your master purchase agreements, discounts and preferred vendors. And why not reward them for using them?

Naturally, this is just the tip of the ice berg. We think they key to consistency across the franchise begins with a powerful franchise intranet and a digital operations manual. If you start at the root of your problems, the rest will follow….