Growing a business the right way can take time. Some companies find success sooner than others, yet others maintain a steady pace that ensures a stable and profitable environment for an indefinite amount of time.
Creating and retaining a positive work environment and customer-centric culture comprises an absolutely critical point of differentiation for any company that likely leads to long-term brand loyalty.
When it comes to extended brand loyalty, AAMCO Transmissions knows a little something about commitment, devotion, and advocacy.
As franchisor of the world’s largest branded chain of transmission specialists and an industry leader in total car care services, AAMCO recently announced that nearly 100 of its longest-tenured franchise owners have spent between 20 and 50 years as part of the franchise system, which equates to more than 3,300 years of brand loyalty.
Loyalty360 caught up with Brian O’Donnell, senior vice president of franchise support, AAMCO Transmissions, to find out more about this incredible brand loyalty from franchisees.
“In his last position, AAMCO CEO Brett Ponton was the CEO of Heartland Automotive, Jiffy Lube’s largest multi-unit franchisee that operated approximately 600 franchised outlets,” O’Donnell explained. “Since joining AAMCO, Brett has implemented a culture of providing industry-leading franchisee support at every level in the organization. He knew what he expected as a franchisee and is determined to provide the right level of support to meet the franchisees’ expectations. Every department head is asked the same question before presenting a new idea or concept: ‘Does this improve the profitability of the AAMCO centers? If not, let’s not waste our time!’ There is no higher priority at AAMCO.”
Fast response time is crucial in providing support to franchisees. “As part of AAMCO’s Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), AAMCO provides franchisees access to a Franchisee Relationship Management tool (FRM) that includes dashboards with information on each center’s key performance indicators (KPI),” O’Donnell said. “Franchisees can use this information to monitor each of their individual centers’ performance and compare it to their peers in the market, division, and chain. Today, information is critical and the investments AAMCO has made in providing key business information to our franchisees allows them to make better-informed decisions and make them faster than ever before.”
As a 53-year-old brand, AAMCO has a tremendous number of longstanding franchisees, including a franchisee in Ohio that next year will celebrate his 50th year in the network.
“With a large group of longstanding franchisees, AAMCO is a very stable brand and has the ability to tap into this knowledge base as we prepare for the next fifty years,” O’Donnell said. “These experienced franchisees can and do provide extremely valuable information as the system evolves.”
AAMCO officials believe that the core of providing high-quality support to the franchise network begins with training. AAMCO recently invested more than $1 million to create AAMCO University, a recognized industry-leading training facility in the Atlanta market. The university is where training occurs for new franchisees, managers, and technicians for franchised centers, and certain AAMCO employees from the operations department.
The AAMCO U auditorium can hold up to 50 students and allows sessions to be recorded and posted online for future reference. The University is also home to the AAMCO Technical Institute where hands-on training is conducted for AAMCO center technicians.
“It has two service lifts where we conduct weekly training webcasts for AAMCO technicians,” O’Donnell explained. “We also made significant investments in an e-learning platform that provides over 300 online courses to our franchise system and a Learning Management System to allow franchisees to track the progress of their employees.”
What’s more, while AAMCO has consistently provided support to its franchisee network, more recently it implemented changes to improve communications internally.
“We created three divisions and aligned every support department into a division,” O’Donnell said. “This alignment allows the internal teams to get a much clearer understanding of the individual support that is needed by franchisees within the division. Marketing, Operations, Technical, National Accounts, Customer Relations, Finance, IT, and Franchise Sales, and Real Estate are all aligned in the division to provide a higher level of support. This level of support allows for easier center operation by franchisees and fosters the ongoing franchisor/franchisee relationship, which, in turn, leads to improved franchisee retention.”