I stumbled upon a good post by Bob Brogan of Interactyx the other day called Franchise Training Fails Customers and Franchisees. I felt it very worthy of a mention considering he has ‘nearly 20 years of professional experience within the franchising business arena’.

Brogan points out, as have I, that delivering a consistent customer experience is integral to creating and maintaining a successful franchise. By their very definition, it’s what a franchise needs to provide to its customers. The way to achieve that brand consistency is through education; the induction and on-going training of franchisees and their teams.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts there seems to be lack of realization of just how important training is in this industry, and therefore a lack of investment in it, or perhaps even worse money is being spent on the wrong tools. Both of which can ultimately only lead one way…and that’s down.

 Brogan rounds off his post with these thoughts:

“With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, the ability to deliver collaborative knowledge management and training environment to increase franchise employee proficiency to business performance objectives are a relatively new phenomenon.   By leveraging a variety of media to provide video snippets, simulations, core on-line course curriculum, franchisors can now affordably augment event learning with a continuous learning environment for all franchisees and employees.  The addition of collaborative tools that allow for the enablement of effective knowledge capture, storage in a readily accessible location, and facilitating knowledge transfer to new learner communities of interest and on-going communities of practice are critical components in solving the franchisor / franchisee training conundrum.”

Hopefully, as the economy begins to show signs of improvement any excuses for not providing training will fade in to the background and many of the accessible and cost-effective online training options on the market will be utilized. In fact, it’s simply that franchises can’t afford not to train their people. Not if they plan to be around next year, and the year after that..

@Schnicker