Standardise processes across multiple branches in 3 easy steps

Your business may be growing quicker than you could ever imagine which is great when it comes to raising brand awareness. However, with multiple branches, is your brand still recognisable and reputable, and is your customer service consistent?

One of the most important factors to consider when it comes to operating multiple branches is brand consistency. In order to protect your reputation, build brand loyalty, and maintain strong brand presence across branches, you need to standardise processes across your business.

Here are the first few steps towards standardisation that could help your business in the right direction…

Step 1: Develop your training process

Implementing a training process is one of the most important aspects for any successful business.

Investing in your team is fundamental to boost performance and create efficiencies, which will help you compete with other agents in your area.

In order to run a successful branch that contributes to profitability and brand reputation, your training programmes need to be standardised. This means ensuring all branches have the same processes so that they can provide the same high standards and level of customer service.

Ensuring that all employees are trained in exactly the same way also helps to create efficiencies and reduce training costs.

Likewise, when it comes to the property industry, legal matters are particularly important so employees need to be up to speed, especially when dealing with conveyancers and communicating with customers effectively on legal issues.

Staff across all branches must be well-versed on relevant legislation as even if just one branch slips up, this could be detrimental for the entire business, which is why building this into a rigorous training programme is essential.

Step 2: Standardise the recruitment processes

Choosing to standardise the recruitment process across your franchise will ensure a number of benefits for all branches. For instance, you can reduce the number of false starters, which are a lot more common than you may think!

Did you know that almost 30% of job seekers have left a job within the first 90 days of starting?

False starters are not only extremely costly for a business but take up a lot of valuable time, as you have to restart the recruitment and training process all over again.

Introducing a standardised onboarding practice is a great way to reduce turnover and get new employees up to standard quickly. Not only does this benefit new recruits by helping them integrate into the company but it also benefits the business by ensuring they provide the same level of customer experience as existing staff across the business from the get-go.

Finally, standardised KPIs and employee performance documents are key for helping businesses to  keep track of how new hires are performing and progressing, and whether they are upholding the high standards of your company; it is the people who work in your branch who are largely responsible for your reputation, so it is key to hire the right people.

mio is a useful platform to track employee progress and performance as it provides regular updates allowing you to see when milestones are overdue.

Step 3: Invest in technology

Investing in technology for all branches to use can be a great way to ensure the buying and selling process remains the same.

Property technology, like mio, includes fantastic features that help make your team’s day to day tasks much easier while allowing them to provide the best possible customer experience.

“By improving communication internally and externally, mio has also helped to take the pressure off the business as a whole,” Carl Hemming, Director from Ginger in Balsall Common, told us.

“For example, anyone in the office can jump onto mio and get stuck in with progressing the transaction – instead of the information sitting in one person’s head or their own notes. The milestones also make it easier for new recruits to get up to speed on the sales progression process.”

If each branch in your business can get the simple things right, everyone will start to see the benefits. After all, when it comes to multiple branches, success for one is success for all.

*Emma Vigus is managing director of sales progression and communication tool mio, powered by tmgroup