Love Thy Franchisees

CanadianBusiness.com:

Almost a year after opening a Nurse Next Door franchise in Kamloops, B.C., Gord and Tara Simpson are receiving fewer and fewer calls from their clients. Yet, what seems like an ominous trend has in fact bolstered the Simpsons’ confidence that they’ve bought into the right franchise system.

Although clients’ calls to book home health care and other support services for seniors are still streaming in, they’re being handled by NND’s sophisticated $1-million call centre at its head office in Vancouver. That spares the franchisees the burnout-inducing chore of having to field urgent calls around the clock and juggle the schedules of dozens of caregivers.

‘Without that, given the number of calls, we could never market ourselves, because we’d be stuck answering the phone,’ says Gord Simpson. He and his wife have used that freed-up time to land more than 40 customers, who pay from less than $100 a week for occasional help to $5,000 a month for around-the-clock care.