Turning Customer Experience into a Competitive Advantage: How NPS Solves Common Franchise Challenges

Managing a franchise is no small feat. Between juggling multiple locations, consistent service quality, and high customer satisfaction—all while trying to grow. But without the right insights, inefficiencies creep in, and customer experience suffers. One of the most critical challenges they face is ensuring a seamless and consistent customer experience across all locations.

A powerful tool that helps franchise businesses tackle these challenges is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is a simple yet effective metric that asks customers, on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely they are to recommend a business to family and friends. Customers who respond with a 9 or 10 are Promoters, 7 or 8 are Passives, and 0-6 are Detractors. A business's NPS is calculated as the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors, providing a clear, quantifiable measure of customer sentiment.

By systematically collecting this feedback, franchises can identify service inconsistencies, uncover pain points, and turn fragmented operations into a seamless, customer-focused experience. Below, we explore four common challenges franchises face and how leveraging NPS can drive meaningful improvements.

1. Inconsistent Customer Experience Across Franchise Locations

Delivering a consistent customer experience across all franchise locations is a significant challenge. When service quality varies from one location to another, it creates an uneven brand experience for customers. While some locations may excel, others may struggle to meet expectations, leading to customer frustration, negative reviews, and ultimately, customer churn.

A major pain point for franchisors is the lack of visibility into where service gaps exist, making it difficult to implement standard quality measures across all franchises.

• Service quality varies drastically between locations.

  Example: A customer visits one location and receives excellent service, but at another, they experience long wait times and disengaged staff. This contrast leads to frustration and a negative impression of the brand, causing the customer to question whether they can rely on the brand for a consistently positive experience across all locations and hesitate to return.

• Some locations provide exceptional service, while others fail to meet basic standards.

  Example: One franchise location is well-staffed and efficient, offering a high-quality customer experience, while another location suffers from understaffing, leading to missed appointments and a lack of attention to customer needs.

• This inconsistency leads to negative reviews and higher churn rates.

  Example: A negative review about poor service at one franchise location can damage the overall reputation of the brand, causing potential customers to hesitate and increasing churn across multiple locations.

Inconsistent service across franchise locations can harm a brand’s reputation and customer loyalty. This leads to customer hesitation, higher churn rates, and lost revenue as customers seek more reliable options. To maintain a strong brand reputation and ensure long-term success, franchisors must implement consistent service standards across all locations.

How NPS Solves It:

• Standardized Feedback Collection: Automated NPS surveys capture consistent customer feedback across all locations, offering an objective measure of performance on a scale from 1 to 10.
• Customizable Surveys: The NPS template can be tailored for both franchisors and franchisees, ensuring uniformity in feedback processes.
• Benchmarking & Insights: Franchisors can compare customer experience metrics across locations to identify top performers and underperformers.
• Proactive Improvements: NPS data provides actionable insights, enabling franchisors to implement targeted training and operational adjustments before issues affect retention and brand reputation.

2. Missed Opportunities to Turn Unhappy Customers into Satisfied Ones

Unhappy customers rarely voice their complaints directly to appointment-based businesses like salons, spas, or gyms. Instead, they often leave negative reviews online or simply stop booking appointments altogether. Without a structured feedback system, businesses fail to recognize these issues until it’s too late. Poor customer retention leads to lost revenue and higher acquisition costs, creating a cycle that negatively impacts overall profitability.

• Unhappy customers rarely complain directly but will leave negative reviews or stop booking services altogether.

  Example: A customer at a salon receives an unsatisfactory haircut but doesn’t speak up, instead leaving a negative review on a popular review platform. The salon misses the chance to fix the problem directly with the customer and damages their reputation.

• Without structured feedback, businesses often don’t realize a problem exists until it’s too late.

  Example: A yoga studio doesn’t actively ask for feedback after classes, so they’re unaware that many members are dissatisfied with the cleanliness of the changing facilities. By the time they realize, several loyal members have canceled their memberships.

• Poor retention leads to lost revenue and higher acquisition costs.

  Example: A spa has high churn rates, with many first-time customers never returning. As a result, the spa spends heavily on digital ads and promotions to bring in new clients, but they’re not investing enough in retaining existing customers, which leads to higher customer acquisition costs and lower overall revenue.

A lack of feedback leads to poor retention, higher acquisition costs, and lost revenue. To improve satisfaction and profitability, businesses need structured feedback systems to identify and resolve issues early.

How NPS Solves It:

• Timely Feedback Requests: Automated NPS messages are sent via email or SMS shortly after an appointment, ensuring every customer has the chance to provide feedback.
• Customizable Survey Timing: Businesses can set specific triggers for survey deployment—whether after a certain number of visits or at a chosen interval (e.g., hours, days, or weeks).
• Private Issue Resolution: Detractors (unhappy customers who rate their experience 0-6) are prompted to chat with your team privately, offering an opportunity to resolve issues before they churn or publicly express their dissatisfaction.

3. No Systematic Approach to Leveraging Promoters for Growth

Many businesses fail to effectively leverage happy customers, or promoters, for growth opportunities such as referrals or positive online reviews. Without a systematic approach, satisfied customers are not encouraged to share their experiences or refer new clients, missing a valuable, low-cost marketing opportunity.

• Happy customers are often not encouraged to leave positive reviews or refer new customers.

  Example: A satisfied customer at a yoga studio enjoys their workout but never receives a prompt to leave a review or share their experience with friends. As a result, the studio misses the opportunity to generate word-of-mouth marketing from a loyal customer.

• Without a structured approach, businesses fail to turn high satisfaction into a marketing advantage.

  Example: A spa has many happy customers but doesn’t have a system in place to ask for referrals or encourage positive reviews. As a result, they miss out on leveraging their promoters for low-cost, high-impact customer acquisition.

• Missed opportunities for leveraging promoters lead to higher customer acquisition costs.

  Example: A salon spends significant resources on paid ads to attract new customers, while failing to tap into the free marketing potential of satisfied clients. This results in higher acquisition costs and missed opportunities for organic growth through word-of-mouth.

When service businesses fail to leverage satisfied customers, they miss out on valuable word-of-mouth marketing, one of the most profitable growth levers. To drive growth effectively and profitably, salons need a system that encourages happy clients to share their experiences and refer new customers.

How NPS Solves It:

• Visible Loyalty: The NPS Report makes it easy to identify Promoters (highly satisfied customers who rate their experience 9-10), providing clear insight into your most engaged customer segment.
• Engagement Actions: Promoters receive a thank you message with a prompt to book another appointment, ensuring satisfied customers can enhance their loyalty.
• Reputation Management: Set up a campaign to encourage Promoters to express their satisfaction in an online review, boosting the business's online visibility and public credibility.
• Ongoing Engagement: Keeps Promoters involved through loyalty, membership and referral programs, increasing the likelihood of repeat visits and new customers.

👉 Check out our Ultimate Guide to Memberships, Loyalty, and Referrals

4. Lack of Measurable Customer Satisfaction Data for Smarter Decision-Making

Many businesses, especially franchises, operate without a structured system to measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and trends over time. This gap in data often leads to decisions being made based on assumptions rather than real customer insights. Without quantifiable data, marketing, training, and operational strategies are not informed by actual customer experiences. As a result, companies struggle to correlate improvements in customer experience with tangible outcomes like revenue growth and retention rates.

• Many businesses lack a structured system to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty.

  Example: A ceramic studio franchise has no consistent way of collecting customer feedback, making it difficult to gauge satisfaction or loyalty across different locations. As a result, decisions around product offerings and customer service improvements are made based on guesswork rather than data-driven insights.

• Without quantifiable customer insights, companies rely on assumptions when making decisions.

  Example: A pet groomer introduces a new line of grooming products based on assumptions about what customers might want. However, they never collect customer feedback on these products or analyze satisfaction. As a result, they end up with products that don’t meet customer needs, leading to unsold stock and lost revenue.

• Companies struggle to correlate customer experience improvements with tangible business outcomes.

  Example: A barbershop franchise invests in enhancing its customer service training, but without tracking customer satisfaction or retention rates, they struggle to determine if these changes are directly impacting sales or customer loyalty.

Without a systematic way to measure customer satisfaction, businesses struggle to make informed improvements that drive growth. To make smarter decisions, businesses need tools that collect and analyze customer sentiment.

How NPS Solves It:

• Real-Time Customer Insights: NPS provides a standardized way to track customer sentiment in real time, allowing businesses to quickly identify satisfaction differences across locations or time periods.
• Deep Data Analysis: The NPS Report offers advanced sorting and filtering by staff, date, customer, and location, making it easier to spot trends and areas needing improvement.
• Actionable Reporting: Reports can be easily exported and also include any written feedback from the customer, providing insights into performance and operational strategies.
• Historical Impact: Tracking NPS over time allows businesses to measure the impact of service improvements, training initiatives, and marketing campaigns on customer satisfaction and retention.
• Clear Performance Indicators: The balance of Promoters to Detractors offers a straightforward gauge of whether customer experience initiatives are paying off.

Conclusion: Turning Insights into Action

For franchises, maintaining consistent, high-quality customer experiences across all locations is key to long-term success. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is more than just a metric—it provides real-time insights, automates the capture of customer sentiment, and supports smarter business decisions.

By leveraging NPS, franchise owners can shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, addressing service gaps and turning unhappy customers into satisfied, loyal ones who stick around. This not only enhances customer retention but also transforms loyal customers into brand advocates, driving stronger branding and sustainable growth.