By Austin Piazza
Home service companies are constantly generating data—in fact, they create new information with every phone call they receive, every technician they dispatch and every job they complete. Each of these interactions provides meaningful intelligence about technician performance, customer trends and overall operational efficiency—and when this data is carefully analyzed, it provides meaningful clues as to how home service companies can work more productively.
Data can be collected at a local level, but for home service franchises, it can also be captured systemwide—providing an even greater volume of intelligence on which meaningful decisions can be based.
When data is collected by the franchisor but then shared across local branches, it equips each franchise owner with greater insight and understanding—not only bolstering market advantage, but ensuring consistency throughout the franchise ecosystem.
Understanding customers
Much of the data that’s aggregated by home service companies involves customer trends—and while individual locations can certainly capture their own customer data, looking at the big picture can be instructive, giving local owners a clearer sense of regional or national trends in consumer decision-making.
Consider a plumbing company which sees an uptick in repair calls for a particular brand of water heater. What might at first seem like an odd coincidence may actually be evidence of a defective product line—and being able to compare similar service calls across different branches and localities can confirm this, helping local owners to better prepare their technicians and advise their customers.
More generally, systemwide data about popular service lines or favored timeslots can be an asset to local owners looking to optimize their technician schedule, ensuring they are fully prepared to accommodate customer preferences.
Don’t forget about marketing data—when the national brand collects data about customers who need equipment repair or replacement, it can guide local owners in their upsell strategies. Such data can be valuable for franchises looking to optimize limited marketing budgets.
Understanding franchisees
If having access to the right data facilitates a deeper understanding of the end customer, it can also illuminate business operations, providing opportunities to streamline and optimize—nationally as well as locally.
Every local branch should be taking stock of their own internal performance data—including factors such as job completion times and first-time fix rates. Knowing how individual technicians perform is important for identifying bottlenecks and areas for performance improvement.
If individual technician metrics can be meaningful, so can performance metrics for entire branches, indicating whether there are particular franchise owners who are either excelling or falling short of systemwide benchmarks.
Such insights can be useful for determining which franchise owners require tailored support or more intensive training. And, individual franchisee data may also be useful for assessing regions where another location might flourish—or regions where the home service market already feels saturated.
In short, reviewing performance metrics is a crucial way to facilitate data-driven decision-making, both for franchisors and for local owners.
Understanding the market
Access to robust data and analytics can ensure deeper understanding of customers and business operations—but more than that, it can provide clarity about the state of the market overall.
Consider the role of predictive analytics. Historical data can be invaluable for determining peak or shoulder seasons, whether for certain services or for home service businesses overall. This data provides an informed way for franchises to forecast seasonal needs, allocating technicians and resources judiciously. And while local franchises may have imperfect or limited data, franchise-wide numbers can reveal a much more holistic picture.
Meanwhile, panning out for a more national assessment can inform competitive pricing strategies or highlight different ways to bundle and promote specific services—potentially resulting in a major revenue boost for specific branches.
The bottom line: the more home service franchises understand broader market conditions, the more they can fine-tune their strategy and enhance their bottom line. It all starts with collecting and evaluating meaningful data from across a franchise platform.
Leveraging data for franchise success
Home service franchises generate new data points with every interaction—and when properly understood, that data can provide meaningful reference points for the entire franchise family, helping owners to make informed decisions that ensure consistent performance systemwide.
That’s why it’s crucial for franchisors to make an investment in data analytics tools—not just to drive success at the national level, but to provide a competitive edge for franchisees throughout the country.
Austin Piazza is Director of Sales for XOi Technologies. He is passionate about helping skilled trade enterprises serve their clients more effectively through robust data solutions. Additional information is available at www.xoi.io.