Are They Happy? 5 Ways to Find Out How Your Children’s Services Franchise Customers Really Feel

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.