CMO Roundtable with Buzz Franchise Brands' Chief Marketing Officer, Angela Zerda Paules

"How does your marketing team work with other departments to elevate the guest experience?"

Angela Zerda Paules 

Chief Marketing Officer 

Buzz Franchise Brands

Collaboration across departments is key to elevating the customer experience. At Buzz Franchise Brands, our approach begins before we have the customer onboard with a focus on efficient lead management. This pairs strategic marketing initiatives to drive inquiries with an intentional focus from the operations and sales departments to guarantee quick, personalized responses to set the stage for a strong relationship. We underscore the importance of a fast response time to leads through regular franchisee training and the deployment of various automated systems for instant communication via text and email. Data from our analytics team vividly demonstrates the positive impact of rapid response on conversion rates, which translates to an efficient customer acquisition cost. If there’s one language everyone speaks clearly, it’s getting the best bang for our buck!

In addition to using technology to support fast response times, it plays a vital role in other areas of the customer experience. For example, our marketing team worked closely with our IT team to support the development of a new app for Wonderly Lights that dramatically improves customer engagement by enhancing the design experience as part of the initial consultation process.

With our recurring service brands, we strive to build long-lasting relationships with our customers, so clear and continuous communication is crucial. We look for ways to interact with our customers throughout the year, providing franchisees with templated seasonal communications and making it easy for them to send customer appreciation gifts or special offers. This is complemented by using Net Promoter Score surveys to monitor customer satisfaction, which are reviewed across our marketing and operations teams to guide franchisees on continuous improvement in staff training and service delivery.

The beauty of franchising is that we’re always trying new things in different areas. We can share those experiences to better the system. To do so, communication within our corporate team and franchise system must be efficient to optimize that information sharing. Our marketing team works in lockstep with our franchise business coaches, analyzing data to identify and act on opportunities for improving customer experience.

Our tagline at Buzz Franchise Brands is to “build brands that get people talking.” Nothing does that more than a customer experience that goes one step beyond the expected, but it takes seamless collaboration across departments to achieve that goal.