If you have been a regular reader of this blog you know that we are strong proponent of customer service and “non-traditional” marketing to improve sales and customer loyalty. We strongly believe that by paying attention to customer service and marketing with emphasis on fundamentals of products and services you can not only significantly improve sales but do so with lower marketing budget.
We are always on the lookout for companies that follow this approach and came across one such company last month at a customer service seminar at IKEA in Canton, MI where I was presenting. I met Dayn Benson, who is Director of Operations at air duct cleaning and HVAC restoration franchise called DUCTZ. Ductz has garnered number of accolades and experienced rapid growth in a short time after being founded in 2002. It was ranked No. 1 in its category by Entrepreneur magazine’s recently released 30th Annual Franchise 500.
In my conversation with Dayn, he pointed out number of things they are doing well that align with what we have been advising small business owners to do. I want to highlight them below in the hope that other small business owners can learn and grow as well as them.
Customer Service
This is the centerpiece of DUCTZ’s strategy to attract new customers and retain existing ones. As we mentioned in an earlier post the success of a business is dependent, to a large degree, on how many life-time customers it has. DUCTZ makes sure it gets feedback from its customers once they complete their job. Not only do they ask for their feedback; but they analyze it in great detail to find out if there is room for improvement and to identify possible signs of trouble.
Marketing
DUCTZ takes innovative approach to market their services. They ask their customers to help them market their business to their friends and families by giving them “incentive dollars” for each referral they provide. This is similar to the strategy we had mentioned in an earlier post on how to ask your customers to market your business.
Community Involvement
In addition, DUCTZ believes strongly in giving back to the community they serve. They have established “Buster’s Charitable Foundation” through which they earmarked portion of the income for national and local charities. Again, this type of community involvement helps build long-term relationship within the community and improve customer loyalty and sales.
At one point during his presentation Dayn mentioned that “I cannot put a finger on one thing we are doing that makes us successful. It’s the overall system.” This is a key to building successful franchise and business. Everyone within the franchise system needs to adopt this customer-centric culture to make it successful.
As you can see DUCTZ is doing many things we have discussed here that helps them build long-term customer relationship and improve sales. No wonder they are one of Entrepreneur’s fastest growing franchises.
Do you know of any other franchises that are as successful? We would love to hear about them.
