Welcome to the New Franchise Customer Experience Report!

We’re shaking things up at Franchise Update Media. After all, the business world’s a pretty shook-up place after 2+ years of accelerated changes and adaptations brought on by Covid. This first issue of this monthly newsletter – the Franchise Customer Experience Report, or FCXR – is part of that change.

The content will build on our goal of delivering “news you can use” to grow and improve your business, whether you’re a franchisee, franchisor, or supplier. We’ll be bringing you relevant content on strategies and tactics, updates on developments in technology, marketing, and operations, case studies, and interviews with franchisees, franchisors, and experts in the areas most important to you, your growth, and your profitability. With CMOs, COOs, and CIOs/CTOs playing a more prominent role in the C-suites of today’s most progressive brands, the lines between these formerly separate functions aren’t blurring – they already have!

The most forward-looking companies know this and long ago shifted their org charts and internal practices accordingly. In 2017, for example, Wingstop named Stacy Peterson its Chief Experience Officer. Today she’s Stacy Peterson Androes and the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

Or take Scott Redler, co-founder of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, who after 19 years as COO was promoted to the brand’s Chief Experience Officer in August 2021. That’s one of the primary reasons we’ve created this newsletter: to focus on the overlap of consumer marketing with operations, technology, and development. It’s also why we’ve partnered with the IFA to re-create our annual Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference to include this emerging trend.

The newly renamed Franchise Customer Experience Conference (FCXC) – coming up in just three weeks in Atlanta – aims to deliver a new educational and networking event for franchise executives responsible for the experience of all the different types of customers franchise brands seek to attract and retain in today’s marketplace. The conference will help all those who serve consumers, businesses, franchisees, and employees in these times of ongoing change, which require franchise leaders to develop a deeper understanding of the data, best practices, and tools they can use to most effectively leverage their marketing, operations, and technology for overall brand success. The conference will take place June 20–23 in Atlanta’s InterContinental Buckhead hotel.

Come and learn how you can take your brand’s customer experience to the next level. The FCXC also will feature the winners of our annual Innovation Awards competition in marketing, technology, operations and human resources – along with the release of the 2022 Annual Franchise Marketing Report (AFMR), the industry’s leading benchmarking resource for marketing insights. To learn more about the agenda, keynote speakers, panelists, sponsors, and awards dinner (included in registration), visit the FCXC website.

Be a part of a groundbreaking new space for the ideas, inspiration and peer-to-peer networking for franchise leaders charged with improving the experience and outcomes for all their customers: consumers, franchisees, employees, and suppliers. Note: The room block rate of $225 expires tomorrow, June 1. Subscribe here to this newsletter and our upcoming Franchise Real Estate Report and Franchise Employer Report, as well as to our other newsletters.