How to Take Control of Your Franchise Location’s Online Reputation
How to Take Control of Your Franchise Location’s Online Reputation
Posted By
Localyser
June 13, 2022

Have you ever thought about your franchise location’s online reputation management strategy? It is something to think about when your franchise name is the one being talked about online. The ultimate goal is to have a 5-star rating and a good reputation. So, what are your franchise locations doing about their online reputation? If you are unsure, set them up with a strategy to track their reviews, reply to their customers, and analyze their review data.

Track

Where to Start

Be aware. It is the best place to start. It is true what they say, ‘ignorance is bliss’. In this situation, if you are unsure of your online reputation, you're assuming it’s fine. Get an idea of your franchise location’s current online reputation. Start by searching the top review sites, Google, Trip Advisor, Yelp, and Zomato. Have a look at their social media accounts; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As well, check out third-party delivery apps like DoorDash, UberEats, and Deliveroo. It is important to know what is being said about your franchise locations across all platforms.  

Positive Reviews

Now that you are familiar with your franchise location’s online presence, you can start to focus on the reviews. Make sure your franchise locations are aware of their positive reviews. Educate them on how to harness the benefits. Positive reviews are your cheapest form of marketing.

What to do with positive reviews:

  1. Showcase Reviews - Use positive reviews on the website as testimonials for your franchise locations.
  2. Share Reviews - Post your positive reviews on social media accounts as stories or posts to gain a following.
  3. Inform staff - Email staff monthly updates of positive reviews to empower work ethic.  

Negative Reviews

Leverage negative reviews. It is okay to have negative reviews. Bad reviews ensure trust between a customer and the business. Negative reviews are an opportunity to recover a potential lost customer. Encourage your franchise locations to respond to every negative review and initiate a recovery plan.

Negative Review Recovery Plan

  1. Issue a personalized, honest apology in the review response.
  2. Offer a free meal for their next visit.
  3. Follow up with a customer that has left a bad review.

Reply

Respond to Every Review

Should I Respond to Every Review? The answer is YES. It is crucial for your franchise locations to start responding to their reviews. Have your franchise locations start with Negative reviews first to address the problem areas. Positive reviews are just as important to respond to. Customers want to be heard and acknowledged for leaving feedback. Ensure they are responding with your franchise brand of voice to stay consistent throughout your entire franchise.

Ensure brand voice, clear values

Brand loyalty is on the rise in 2022. It is important to stay consistent with your company's corporate values. Make sure your franchise locations are following guidelines. When responding to reviews, posting on social media, and marketing campaigns; it is crucial to sound consistent. Customer retention is the easiest way to gain higher sales and start customer loyalty. In turn, customer feedback and a positive online presence for your company.

Engage with Customers on Social Media

Make sure your franchise locations have social media accounts for their specific locations. Your franchise locations should be responding to customers through Instagram DMs and Facebook messages. It is an important part of customer connection. Your franchise locations should be active on their social media, creating content for their followers. At the end of the day, their followers are ultimately the entire franchise followers.

Generate & Analyze

Customer Feedback

It is going to happen where you notice one of your franchise locations has little to no reviews online. This is also a problem. Therefore, they need to generate customer feedback. QR codes can be used on areas such as tables, back of menus, receipts, and takeout boxes to solicit feedback. Once a customer scans a QR code, they can be directed to a personalized landing page to leave their feedback.

Review Trends

Corporate

It is important to be aware of your franchise locations performance. You may have locations that perform better than others. Looking at data trends, you can spot issues and find out where these locations are not performing as well. It is beneficial for your company to know where to improve based on insights from reviews.

Franchise Locations

Your franchise location’s should also be aware of how their restaurant is performing. They should look out for their rating on different review platforms. It can be helpful to see how the surrounding competition is doing. Benchmarking reports give your franchise locations the standards to adhere to.

What’s Next

Add a ORM Strategy to the Agreement

Avoid the worst-case scenario; where a bad story goes viral about one of your franchise locations. In the future, add an ORM (Online Reputation Management) plan to the franchise agreement. You can have peace of mind knowing there is a consistency across all parts of your company.

Use a All-In-One Tool

Luckily a tool like Localyser exists to automate this all. Localyser is designed for multi-location brands. The tool provides a neutral solution to consolidate all franchisee’s data into one ready-only report for the franchisor. Localsyer makes it simple for franchises to track reviews, message customers, generate feedback, and gain insights from trends. Localyser will create brand-loyal templates for your franchise locations to respond to reviews with. Set permissions to give certain access to different parts of the company. The all-in-one dashboard.

Localyser can help. Reach out today to learn how easy Localyser makes managing restaurant reviews across multiple websites and more.

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Our all-in-one solution will organize and optimize your online reputation for every location.

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