Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2014 | Page 78

L oya l t y T H R O U G H S E R V I C E
the front-line employee.” He says the
level of an employee’s customer service
is predicated on how high their service
aptitude is, and that comes from three
sources: their previous life experience
(not much with a young person); their
work experience (their previous training,
not always good); and their experience
at their current job.
“Every company preaches customer
service, but at the end of the day how
much training are they giving employees on the hospitality side, as compared
with the technical side?” he asks. “All the
training given is technical, there’s no
soft-skill customer engagement being
taught.” With proper training, he says,
a 16- or 17-year-old could be excep-

tional. “The company’s job is to train and
certify every employee on their service
aptitude—just like they do for making
coffee or a pizza,” says DiJulius.
Rethinking loyalty programs

“Where companies fail miserably is
they think a customer loyalty program produces customer loyalty, and
it doesn’t,” says DiJulius. “Before you
create a customer loyalty program,
you have to make sure the experience
is there. Simply rewarding customers
is not a loyalty program. Sometimes
companies use it as a crutch, but if the
experience isn’t there it can’t take the
place of the experience.”
Instead, says DiJulius, think of it as

Measuring Up

J

eff Reetz measures everything, including carefully tracking four key
components that affect the quality of his customers’ experience:
1) HQSC (overall hospitality, quality, service, cleanliness);
2) food safety (through an independent organization, in addition to
his own monitoring);
3) CHAMPS (cleanliness, hospitality, accuracy, maintenance, product, service); and
4) repurchase intent.
“We take a rather absolute view of this last measurement,” he says. “When a
customer is completing a survey, one question is, ‘How likely are you to recommend Pizza Hut to friends and family?’ For all the transactions we do, we look
at what percentage are 100 percent satisfied.”
He makes sure not only to measure these things, but also to evaluate them.
And thanks to his COO, he takes the individual measurements one step further,
combining them into a single performance management system.
“Our COO put together a program that links together all the elements of
what we expect from every position in the orgaJeff Reetz
nization, and how it rolls up into performance
appraisal and compensation,” he says. “He linked
together what were a lot of independent things,
making sure all the elements of the scorecard,
all the things we’re tracking, are fed into the
performance management system.”
Every restaurant has a scorecard, every area
has a scorecard, and the company has an overall
scorecard. “This tells us sales growth, profit attainment, employee retention, the percentage
trained in 30 days, those likely to recommend,
CHAMPS, HQSC—all in one scorecard,” says
Reetz.
The system was rolled out at the beginning
of 2013. To help make it fly, it was created in
coordination with the restaurant managers. “We got buy-in with the process,”
says Reetz. “You can’t complain if you co-authored it.”

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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue I, 2014

a customer rewards program, not a customer loyalty program. “The only thing
that creates loyalty is increased satisfaction from a consistent experience,” he
says. “I think they go hand in hand, but
it starts with the customer experience.
If the customer experience is right—and
consistent—then we can talk about rewarding customers.”
The surprising thing, he says, is that
was the airlines who got it right with
rewards programs. “They nailed it, but
are struggling with the customer experience,” he says. For example, at his
John Roberts Spas, DiJulius rewards his
repeat customers with a VIP program
modeled on the airlines’ frequent flyer
programs. His has four tiers, based on
a customer’s total spending and number
of referrals they provide.
Taking it a step further, he also uses
his VIP program to boost sales. In early
November he sends letters to customers
saying something to the effect of, “You’re
$250 away from hitting Gold. Would
you like to buy some gift certificates?”
This drives people in to spend more at
the same time it rewards them for it.
In his work with franchisees, DiJulius says he’s shocked at the mindset of
franchisees who don’t think it’s “fair” to
reward some customers and not others.
“You don’t give less of an experience to
any customer,” he says, but you do reward loyalty. With airlines, for example,
preferred customers get perks like early
boarding or free bags, but everyone gets
on the plane and arrives at the same
destination.
Melton doesn’t have a problem with
rewarding his best customers. “I tell my
guys, ‘If you know a customer who’s ordered 30 times, feel free to call them up
and say we’re going to send them a free
artisan pizza tonight. Just training people
to make a customer say ‘Wow’—and for
the amount of [ۙ^H