How To Collect Useful Training Feedback From Your Franchisees

Jay Malcom

Regardless of whether your training is online or instructor-led, it’s really important to collect and analyze audience feedback data. The audience we’re talking about today is franchisees; most likely new franchisees who are in the process of learning how to run a successful operation at one of your company’s stores.

For a franchisee, franchise training is a make-or-break matter. Your company has put together a tried-and-true, detailed system for store success and a franchisee who fails to learn and apply the system as directed will struggle.

But how do you know the training program is working? Training feedback. Let’s talk about a few different types of feedback you should be collecting from your training programs.

5 Ways to Collect Useful Feedback from Franchisee Training

1. Ask Satisfaction & Confidence questions.
   
   
   
   • Do franchisees like the course? The temptation to think this doesn’t matter is real, but in a world of constant distractions, training has to hold franchisees’ attention. It needs to be interesting, well-executed and even entertaining.
     
   • Do they feel it was a good use of time? If not, they are less likely to apply what you’ve tried to teach.
     
   • Was it too long, too short or just right? Let them channel their inner Goldilocks. Too long and attention spans waver. Too short, and knowledge transfer can’t take place.
     
   • What device did they use to access the course and how was that experience? Look for trends in device-preference.
     
   • Do they feel more confident in their knowledge and ability having taken the training? Because liking a course isn’t enough.
   
   
2. Ask Assessment questions.
   
   
   
   • Comprehension – Are franchisees able to demonstrate that they’ve understood the material as presented?
     
   • Application – Using scenarios, simulations and real-world application, are they able to correctly apply what they’ve learned?
   
   
3. Ask them again. Don’t just ask once; ask the same questions in different ways to improve feedback validity.
   
4. Ask them frequently. Don’t put all of your questions at the end of your course. You’ll overwhelm your franchisees (who are probably anxious to get back to their new business) and they may be tempted to rush through the questions. Instead, scatter them throughout the training after each module, or even interspersed within a module for specific, immediate feedback.
   
5. Ask them after-the-fact. Follow up after training is complete. Do the franchisees remember what was taught? Are they applying knowledge correctly to running their location(s)? It’s one thing to be able to answer comprehensive and application questions immediately following a training module. It’s another to still answer them correctly weeks and months after training’s end.

Using Feedback to Make Training Programs Better

Franchisee feedback on training programs is useful in a number of ways. Below are just a few ideas for using this data once you’ve collected it.

• Identify where edits and adjustments to course content are needed.
  
• Identify where new courses should be created.
  
• Identify application exercises that did or didn’t work and make adjustments as needed.
  
• Determine your plan for follow-up, performance support and coaching.
  
• Optimize content for different devices based on actual device usage.
  
• Start to measure the true impact of your training. Is it changing behaviors? How is it affecting overall business performance? For example, this could be measured by point-of-sale activities like collecting customer email addresses, store performance on inspections and sales growth.

How has audience feedback impacted training program development at your organization? What metrics have you found especially valuable? We’d love to hear from you; leave a comment below!

photo credit: Mandolin chord: C

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