MARKETING CASE STUDY:
Listening and Responding to Customer Feedback - BirdEye
Background:
The Simple Greek, a national chain of fast-casual Greek restaurants was rapidly growing and adding new franchisees to the fold. Once new store operators officially completed training and opened the doors to their new restaurants, there were numerous operational hats to be worn, from hiring, to staff training, to ordering, and to food prep, etc. Being a new franchisee was completely overwhelming, leaving franchisees with limited time for guest interaction.
Problem:
In addition to being overwhelmed operationally, new franchise owners were also quickly overtaken by the volume of customer communication coming to them from numerous social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Yelp, to name just a few. Customers were posting both compliments and complaints online and for the most part, these posts were falling on deaf ears. New franchisees just didn’t have enough time in a busy day to monitor and respond to customer input across multiple platforms in an efficient manner.
Solution:
Lynn Hoban and her marketing team knew that engaging with restaurant guests and creating positive relationships online was worth its weight in marketing gold. To make it easier for franchisees to get actively involved on social in order to reward loyal patrons and quickly resolve customer complaints, she leveraged the power of BirdEye, a mobile-friendly social listening and responding digital tool. BirdEye aggregated guest posts from all registered social media platforms and alerted franchisees in real time when customer input was posted online for their restaurants.
Results:
The BirdEye platform helped TSG franchisees to listen and respond to their restaurant guests like never before. This mobile-friendly App made it quick and easy to understand what was going on in their stores, even when they weren’t there. When a guest posted about a negative experience online, the franchisee was able to reclaim the customer and handle the situation with staff at the store level. If a guest paid a compliment, the franchisee was able to thank the guest personally and offer a reward, just for being nice. Once franchisee got up to speed on using BirdEye, we all wondered how we lived without it.
Effective marketing for any enterprise starts with leveraging technology to solve business problems. If you want to increase franchise owner satisfaction and achieve higher system sales, contact Lynn Hoban at Lynn@LynnHobanMarketing.com to find out more.