Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2012 | Page 72
CustomersCount
BY JACK MACKEY
What’s in a Name?
Training front-line employees in customer engagement
T
his has always been the place, right? America, I mean,
where anybody can start with nothing and turn it into
something. Every multi-unit organization started with
a dream, and many with just a single location. And for
those who have kept their promises to customers and delivered
great service, success has often followed.
Let me tell you about Lenny’s Sub Shop, founded in Bartlett,
Tenn., in 1998 by Len and Sheila Moore. Lenny’s is a Philadelphiastyle sub shop that has grown to about 200 franchisees across the
country. They serve their own unique brands of potato chips and
thin crisps, and they make a signature hot cherry-pepper relish,
just one way they make their subs unique. Their sandwiches are
terrific. Why? They provision top-quality products, slice meats
and cheeses to order, and adhere to their recipes religiously. But
what is their recipe for customer service, for creating a friendly
welcoming environment?
At Lenny’s they strive to learn the name of every regular customer—and to memorize where
they work and their favorite sub.
They make a game out of this and
even have a little internal competition going about who can remember the most customers by
name, place of work, and favorite
sub. So when I walk in, it’s “Hey
Jack from SMG, turkey and Swiss
with light mayo on wheat, right?”
This is the classic “Cheers Effect,” where everybody knows your
name and your favorite drink. This
is above and beyond being nice to
customers. This is being engaged with customers. We know from
modeling the impact of friendly, engaged employees on customers that these behaviors drive customer loyalty.
When employees at Lenny’s don’t recognize a guest, they ask
if this is their first visit and offer to guide them through the menu
to help them find what they want. Along the way, employees are
encouraged to make a personal recommendation—not one that
sounds like they’re promoting the most expensive thing on the
menu, but a sincere recommendation about a menu item the
employee personally loves.
And they get extra credit in the customer engagement column
for making personal recommendations. When a guest takes your
recommendation and “loves it,” that creates a highly satisfied
guest—one who is highly likely to return; in fact 200 percent
more likely to return than guests who are not highly satisfied.
That is crucial to converting first-timers to regulars, and to explaining why Lenny’s is succeeding today.
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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue I, 2012
Here’s another example of a service-oriented franchise: Papa
Murphy’s, the world’s largest “Take ’N’ Bake” pizza and the fifthlargest pizza chain in the U.S., with more than 1,100 stores, almost all of them franchised. In 2003, Papa Murphy’s was voted
“Best Pizza Chain in America” and has been every year since.
The brand has won multiple awards, and they advertise these,
but they know that they have huge competition from Costco,
grocery stores, and other pizza chains. So instead of becoming
spoiled by success, they focus on connecting with each customer
to separate themselves even further from the competition.
Papa Murphy’s has three opportunities to engage customers: (1) when they walk in to place their order, it’s easy to get
names and use them; (2) as the customer goes through the line
to get their pizza made to order, the employee has a chance to
use the customer’s name in conversation; and (3) as the order is
handed over to the customer, one more chance to address the
customer by name.
The key is to engage each guest
in a casual conversation as the employees are preparing the pizza.
Papa Murphy’s makes it easy for
the employees to do this—in fact,
they provide them with coaching every day. At Papa Murphy’s,
when employees come to work,
there are three conversation topic
starters posted in the back of the
house. One could be about a nearby
local event, another might have
something to do with a local sports
team, or maybe it’s as simple as the
local weather forecast. The point is that the managers are not
just telling employees to use the guest’s name and engage with
them, they are teaching them how and modeling this behavior.
Just as the food preparation is deliberately designed to yield
a great product every time, the guest interactions at Papa Murphy’s are baked into the operation. It’s part of the business operating model and a big reason why they’ve been making it in
the U.S. for 30 years.
Lesson? Your customer service is your operation. Customer
service is not the icing on the cake—it should be baked into the
cake. This is a key to long-lasting growth.
SMG Vice President Jack Mackey helps multi-unit
operators improve customer loyalty and drive growth.
To request “Want Better Insights from Text Analytics?
Start by Eliciting Better Comments,” contact him at
816-448-4556 or [email protected].