Michael Gerber's Franchise Prototype Rule to Win #5: Uniformly Predictable Service

Gerber's fifth rule, from p. 105:

The Model Will provide a Uniformly Predictable Service to the Customer.

Your customer has to know that your business will be the same tomorrow as it is today.

Otherwise he or she won't come back and they won't tell their friends about you, or they'll say you're out to lunch. And if you have a franchise, customers have to know that your product will be the same in Seattle as is in Saskatoon.

One of the things that draw customers to places like Howard Johnson's, or MacDonald's, Wal-Mart, or Starbucks, regardless of whatever you think of those places, is that people know what they're going to get. I know that Starbucks is always going to make a grande Americano the same way wherever I go.

If I go to a different caffeine den I don't know what the coffee's going to be like, what sizes they have, or how it will be made and I always have to ask them how they make it. I have enough on my mind without having to worry about how they're going to make my coffee. And the layout's pretty much the same. You know where you go to order, to pick up, and where to get the sweetener and cream. Other places, you have to search around unless you know it already.

What do you think of this? The goal is to produce more skilled entrepreneurs. Does this help? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.