French Coffee Shop X Digitaleo: organizing your network’s communication

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French Coffee Shop, created in 2002, is a network specializing in coffee shops inspired by American Coffee Shops. It has around fifty points of sale spread across France. In 2020, two former franchisees named Pierre and Carole decided to buy the network despite a complicated period due to COVID-19. Indeed, the network lacked supervision at that time and overall performance was down. They therefore wanted to structure and modernize their network's communication.

The management therefore has different ambitions, particularly in terms of local marketing . We will see in this article how they managed to organize their communication while developing their network, thanks to Digitaleo.


1. The challenges of organizing communication for romania phone number library the French Coffee Shop network
2. How to organize communication in a developing network?
3. Key factors for the success of organizing network communication
Conclusion


network communication organization issues

1. The challenges of organizing communication for the French Coffee Shop network
During the takeover, an observation was made: the network's communication was not in keeping with the brand's image, which lacked notoriety despite a presence throughout France. In addition, contact between the head office and the franchisees was completely broken, with each moving forward on their own, without communicating much.

Regarding communication, two issues weigh on the network:

The lack of awareness : in fact, “only people who have a French Coffee Shop café near them know the brand, and they often think that it is an independent and not a national brand” explains Julie-Anne Duigou, marketing director.
The need to modernize and standardize communication across the network: POS displays are aging, the digital maturity of franchisees is not uniform and there is no exchange or sharing of best practices between them.
It therefore seemed very important to act in order to organize the local and national communication of the network, but how?



how to organize network communication

2. How to organize communication in a developing network?
To do this, the headquarters began by reconnecting with its entire network, in particular by organizing a convention at the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The aim of this meeting was to be able to show franchisees what actions had been decided internally in order to modernize the image of the French Coffee Shop brand:

Carry out a complete rebranding of the brand
Implement a communication plan that is applied to all points of sale
Digitize the network
After making all these announcements, they had to be implemented. Two people were therefore recruited at headquarters to take charge of communication and the deployment of a tool to manage the local marketing of franchisees, Digitaleo.

Julie-Anne Duigou, Marketing Director of the French Coffee Shop network, explains the choice of this platform and how it was decisive in organizing the network's communication: Julie Anne Duigou Marketing Director French Coffee Shop

“ We wanted to deploy a local marketing tool , particularly for social networks, POS, presence management and customer reviews. The goal: to offer a platform that brings together all the levers in one place . Digitaleo met all these challenges with the added benefit of an ergonomic and fun tool, adapted to the different levels of digital maturity of our franchisees. We can take control of certain subjects while leaving a certain autonomy to our local points of sale. “

Next steps in this implementation: mastering the tool and supervising franchisees . To do this, French Coffee Shop has chosen to recruit Salomé, Network Facilitator, in order to calmly operate these changes and developments.

Since the start of using Digitaleo, franchisees have been able to implement various communication and marketing actions using the communication kits produced by the head office, which they can personalize.
Below are some non-exhaustive examples:

Online visibility : with Digitaleo, it is possible to multi- distribute local information for each establishment on numerous online platforms and directories (such as Google, Here, Facebook, etc.), update establishments' exceptional opening hours in just a few clicks and publish Google Posts to relay their news .
google post local communicationGoogle Post published by French Coffee Shop

Customer review management : from automating review responses to response templates to semantic analysis to identify strengths and areas for improvement, Digitaleo allows you to effectively manage your customer reviews . In fact, some franchisees have chosen to delegate review management to the French Coffee Shop marketing team.
response to customer reviews on the Digitaleo platform

Response to customer reviews from the Digitaleo platform

Social networks : different ready-to-use posts are available on the tool to address different themes (events, promotional offers, news, etc.). This ensures respect and consistency of the brand image while facilitating the process for franchisees, for whom this is not their core business.
Print and goodies : the solution has made it possible to modernize the POS and standardize it throughout the network while promoting local products, thanks to local printers. Franchises can order their POS, work clothes, and displays in just a few clicks.
print goodies local communication

French Coffee Shop Print & Goodies online store on Digitaleo


key factors success organization communication network

3. Key factors for the success of organizing network communication
Once these actions were in place, it was necessary to make sure that it worked, especially when some of the franchisees seemed rather hostile to digital.

To begin with, a demonstration of the platform was given during training sessions . At the same time, Salomé, Network Facilitator, began her field visits to gauge the interest in the network.

Then, monthly summary emails began to be sent to franchisees. They included a “franchisee podium” based on their performance, surveys on current actions and teasers on upcoming operations.

Today, the support is bipartite , on the one hand, Salomé continues her on-site visits and the Digitaleo Customer Success teams remain available, remotely, for any questions. And of course, to best manage the network, the French Coffee marketing team monitors the uses and performance of its establishments.


Conclusion
As you will have understood, structuring the communication of a network of 50 establishments, especially when it is in full development, is no easy task. It requires having a dedicated internal team, equipping yourself with an easy-to-use tool, adapted to franchisees with different levels of digital maturity and supporting your network with a well-established framework.

Thanks to Digitaleo, French Coffee Shop was able to meet the needs of its franchisees while addressing the business challenges of its network.

Over the past year and a half, the brand has been able to modernize its image while creating team dynamics across the territory . It now intends to continue to increase its turnover while opening new franchises and involving its franchisees. At the Digitaleo platform level, it wants to encourage stores showing less interest to use it in order to achieve a usage rate of 100% .