With COVID-19 continuing to cause chaos and disruption around the world, we all know the franchising sector has been as badly affected as any other. So, what are franchisors doing to ensure the survival and future growth of their businesses?
Last month, I wrote about the impact of COVID-19 on the franchising sector and, in doing so, asked our AFA members to contribute with their individual accounts of how they’ve been affected by the pandemic and what they’re doing to adapt their ways of working.
I was overwhelmed by the response I received from our members, as well as encouraged by their determination and positivity! So much so, that I’ve decided to continue with the feature this month and share some more of their stories with you.
We’ve seen many examples of where franchisors have turned to technology to keep their businesses running, such as using video conferencing tools to keep in contact with their franchisees and staff, as well as improving their existing, online training platforms and apps. However, one of our members, Nottingham-based PerCurra, went one stage further.
PerCurra is a ‘care at home’ company that provides an extensive range of services who require support to live independently. Once lockdown was announced, there was initially widespread confusion as to whether carers were classed as keyworkers. With government guidelines and policies changing on an almost hourly basis, Gill Heppell, founder of PerCurra, knew she needed to take immediate steps to ensure her franchisees and their carers were kept up to date at all times and were taking every precaution to keep themselves and their clients safe.
Gill had already launched an app to the business, a year or so ago, as an internal communication tool. The app, designed by DGB Technology, (a company that Gill has since bought into as she was so impressed by their products), is extremely affordable, totally customisable and offers the ability to distribute information to a remote workforce quickly and efficiently.
Thanks to the app, Gill was able to watch the daily, government coronavirus briefings; think about the impact on her business; change and amend policies; upload them to the app and distribute them to franchisees and staff at the speed of light! She used the app to send out regular updates, briefings and push notifications so that all staff were made aware of any announcements that directly impacted their jobs.
Gill also uploaded a weekly podcast to the app, in which she outlined any important updates and also announced the weekly winners of an incentive she had launched for staff who had gone the extra mile to help their clients. Keeping staff morale at the forefront of her mind, Gill also distributed thank you letters from Matt Hancock and the Sheriff of Nottingham via the app, to remind staff of how their important work was appreciated.
She says, ” I felt strongly that these carers deserved to be thanked and rewarded, whilst everyone else was in lockdown, either furloughed or working from home, these guys were going out every day, without worrying about picking up the disease, and continuing to do their jobs.”
The app is free to franchisees and their staff and meant that franchisees were given peace of mind that communication was being taken care of, leaving them free to focus on their businesses and managing their staff and clients.
Percurra has since surveyed staff and franchisees to find out what they thought of the app and the results have been extremely positive. They plan to continue using the app, moving forward, and have since improved the chat functionality within the app, meaning that everything can be tracked and recorded in one place.
“Technology has made a huge difference to the business,” says Gill. “We couldn’t even send out rotas or invoices in the normal way, as we were told COVID-19 can potentially live for 72 hours on surfaces, so everything had to go online immediately. DGB Technology saved me a fortune – I was originally quoted £80,000 for a bespoke app and this solution is significantly cheaper.”
DGB Technology is currently in the process of creating various white label apps, specifically designed for looking after remote workforces under rapidly changing circumstances. During the pandemic, they designed five free apps, including a COVID-19 version for care homes, which has since been nominated for an upcoming award.
We have also heard several stories of how AFA members have had to adapt their businesses to incorporate social distancing and enhanced hygiene measures. Many have switched to online training, as opposed to face-to-face, or invested in improvements to their existing training platforms. One example is Fantastic Services, a franchise that provides home cleaning and maintenance services. With many of their services restricted, Fantastic Services focused on promoting and providing their minimal contact services, such as deliveries, and ensured that franchisees had the appropriate PPE and detergents. New policies were written and daily temperature checks were enforced for all staff. They also introduced a new anti-viral sanitation service for commercial and residential properties, which is proving to be very popular.
As expected, the members who already provided virtual services are faring better, but have still had to adapt their ways of working and focus on supporting their franchisees through the pandemic. As an agency that provides virtual assistants, Get Ahead VA was well placed to weather the storm. However, as soon as the government announced the lockdown, Get Ahead VA owner, Rebecca Newenham, immediately got in touch with all of her franchisees to see how they were feeling. She listened and worked with them to create a personalised plan, understanding their individual situations and family commitments.
Rebecca introduced weekly team video calls for the franchisees and wider Get Ahead VA team of over forty virtual assistants. These regular meetings were a chance for the team to come together and share support for the week ahead.
As lockdown progressed, Rebecca kept in regular touch with her franchisees, including celebrating team birthdays to keep energy levels high. She then set about sharing best practices and advice for virtual working and helped a number of clients to make the transition. This included converting physical workshops into online courses and training using tools like Zoom, to keep businesses working despite physical restrictions.
As well as offering advice and guidance, many of our members have offered financial support to their franchisees to help them through the pandemic. One such franchisor is Spoton.net, a website consultancy franchise that decided to waive its franchise support fees for a month in order to provide some financial leeway. They also offered customers, whose businesses had been impacted by the lockdown, a suspension of their monthly payment plan for an initial three months. Spoton.net kept in touch with customers through a series of newsletters, providing tips on how to promote their businesses and advice on what updates they should be making to their websites to reflect the changes within their own organisations.
In addition to this, they aimed to provide their franchisees with comprehensive advice and guidance on surviving the pandemic. This included the production of a new marketing and communications guide and weekly Zoom calls to share best practice and ways of working during this challenging time.
A few of our members have reported that they have not had to make many changes to their ways of working or business models at all. An example is Dor-2-Dor, a leaflet delivery company that temporarily ceased all delivery rounds from the beginning of lockdown until May, due to concerns that leaflets may be spreading the virus, but once it was made clear that this was unlikely to be the case, they were able to start delivering again. Another member, Dream Clean Ovens, was forced to suspend all operations as they weren’t allowed into people’s homes, and there was obviously no way to work around that. However, now that the lockdown has been lifted, owner Nick Lambert reports that they are inundated with work, the business is swiftly recovering and, as they already used PPE and antibacterial products, have not had to change their working practices.
In conclusion, I am remarkably cheered by these positive stories and anecdotes and hope you will be too! The resilience and determination of our AFA members to keep and grow their businesses throughout this ongoing pandemic is impressive and bodes well for the recovery of the sector as a whole. It’s clear that in order for franchises to survive, they’ve had to find new, innovative ways of working and, thankfully, digital technologies have given us all a much-needed lifeline to keep things moving.
