Text Request Talks
3 Franchise Communication Tips with Frank Fiume of Emerging Franchise Brands
Business texting can grow your franchise, but only if you delegate tasks and set clear communication roles first.
Here’s how to use texting messaging to streamline your franchise’s overall communication.
This article takes insights from our Text Request Talks podcast with Frank Fiume and further distills it into advice specific to texting. Fiume is the podcast host of Emerging Franchise Brands, as well as the founder and previous CEO of i9 Sports.
The following tips expand on how to meet the same goals Fiume does with text messaging.
Watch the full interview on YouTube.
1. Delegate communication tasks.
Fiume’s biggest advice to franchisors is knowing your weaknesses and delegating tasks accordingly, so you can prioritize your strengths. How can texting help you do the same thing?
Pick your best communicators, or most available reps, to then handle your customer and employee communications. You can identify these reps by the communication tasks they already handle—for example, a customer support rep who talks to customers every day is going to be a much better fit than your operations manager who stays behind-the-scenes.
Leaning on your team to prioritize their strengths is key to helping your franchise grow.
2. Give your reps the proper SMS tools to handle communication.
Now that you know who you’re delegating business text messaging tasks to, give your reps the proper SMS tools to handle that communication. Fiume says it’s your job to empower them.
Text Request offers the following to make delegating business texting tasks ongoing a breeze.
Contact Tags: Identify contacts based on which rep they’re assigned to. Each rep can get their own custom color, so it only takes one quick glance at a Contact Tag to know who the message needs to be handed off to.
Templates: Templates are the Text Request version of “stock” or “saved” messages. They not only help you save time, but they also keep common communications consistent across your entire team.
Scheduled Messages: Type a message now, then schedule it to send at a later time or date. This helps your reps to plan around their workday.
Reviews: Connect your locations’ Google Business pages to Text Request, so you can easily earn, track, and respond to online reviews all from one place. Online reviews are the #1 way people decide whether or not to work with a business.
Groups: Create groups for things like current customers, location-specific customers, use cases, and more. This is helpful not only for identification, but also for when you need to message your groups for something specific, like a new promotion or solution.
User Permission Levels: Assign your Text Request users to permission levels that fit their levels of expertise to prevent oversights.
Business texting will streamline your franchise’s communication when your reps utilize the tools that best fit your process.
3. Set metrics for success.
Fiume urges franchise leaders to cast their vision, set goals, and create parameters—so your team can do things without you needing to be in the weeds, or in their faces, day-to-day.
For business texting in particular, you need to narrow down which communication goals your team should tackle. The five biggest outcomes we recommend franchises focus on with their text messaging are:
Time saved — The speed at which tasks are completed compared to calls or emails
Responses — The rate at which people take an action after you message them
Revenue earned — The amount of sales or services that can be contributed to texts
Appointments kept — The amount of appointments booked or kept via text
Stress reduced — The overall rating of how your team feels about work day-to-day
After your reps have been texting for a while, they should home in on where they're seeing success. Aligning your team around one common goal will improve your results, as opposed to having them scramble to tackle everything all at once. Once they nail that initial goal, then they can move onto the next.
Fiume says that laying out these goals early on ensures your franchise can continue running smoothly without you—which ultimately should be your main goal.
How Else Can Text Messaging Grow Your Franchise?
The above are just a few quick tips—but we have an entire in-depth franchise text messaging playbook for those who want to learn even more ways to implement SMS into your communication tactics.
Our business texting software has helped hundreds of franchise brands streamline communication, and we’re ready to help yours next!
