Building a Customer-Centric Approach to Grow Your Franchise

Building a Customer-Centric Approach to Grow Your Franchise

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Dennis Gill: Okay. So welcome everybody to CareSmartz360 On Air, a home care podcast. I’m Dennis Gill, senior sales consultant at Caresmartz.

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Dennis Gill: And today we’ve got a very special guest joining us. Cesar Gonzalez, the owner of Home Helpers Home Care of Canton, Georgia, a senior care franchise.

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Dennis Gill: Caesar, it’s great to have you here. I’m really excited to learn more about your work and the services you provide to older adults in your community.

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Dennis Gill: So as the owner of a senior care franchise, I’m sure you’ve got a wealth of knowledge and experience to share.

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Dennis Gill: I’m always fascinated to hear the personal stories behind the business owners and entrepreneurs, and look forward to picking your brain about the best ways to help seniors maintain their independence and quality of life as they age.

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Dennis Gill: So this is such an important topic, and I know our listeners are going to find your insights really valuable. So let’s get started. I’m old years so welcome. 1st of all, Cesar, how are you doing today?

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Cesar Alonso: Thank you, Dennis. It’s great being here, and thank you for having me.

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Dennis Gill: Perfect. Same to you. Same wise. All right. So let’s quickly start this podcast. My 1st question for you, can you tell us a bit about your philosophy when it comes to serving your clients and their families.

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Cesar Alonso: Yes, absolutely. You know, it’s

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Cesar Alonso: in service is always very important. To keep in mind that

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Cesar Alonso: your product is actually what your caregivers or other employees are doing in front of the clients. And so for us, it’s very important

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Cesar Alonso: to 1st of all, select the correct caregivers.

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Cesar Alonso: And this starts with a hiring process that I oversee.

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Cesar Alonso: and what we’re looking for in the hiring process is

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Cesar Alonso: selecting and hiring the caregivers that truly care.

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Cesar Alonso: We are looking for comments like, you know, this is my passion. I do this work because

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Cesar Alonso: it was. It’s my calling, or I enjoy helping people

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Cesar Alonso: to me. That’s very important, right? You can. You can teach many things. You can train caregivers to do many things.

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Cesar Alonso: But one thing that you can never

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Cesar Alonso: teach or train is to actually care and have a passion for what you do.

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Cesar Alonso: So for us, you know it starts. It starts with that step.

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Cesar Alonso: We also have systems in place.
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Cesar Alonso: And those systems allow us to

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Cesar Alonso: review the Care plan with the caregivers, and see every step of the process during a typical caregivers. Day

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Cesar Alonso: for example, they clock in. We know when they clock clocked in if they clocked in. You know, late. We know about that.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: The clock out. We know about it.

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Cesar Alonso: and then we also see the tasks that are being completed throughout the day. So that’s very important because

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Cesar Alonso: we can provide feedback

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Cesar Alonso: in basically live in a matter of minutes. We know that something is not going well or something is going well, and we can say, Hey, thank you for doing this for our client right.

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Dennis Gill: Got it.

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Cesar Alonso: And then I think, the last part of this question, I would like to say.

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Cesar Alonso: everything that you do every day is reflected in

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Cesar Alonso: the level of service that you provide to a client. You know, you know, that a a company cares for you when

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Cesar Alonso: the owner or someone in the staff goes and picks up a caregiver that’s at their home because their car broke.

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Cesar Alonso: drives them to a client’s house.

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Cesar Alonso: or you know that a company cares when the owner shows up any given day to provide care because the caregiver was sick right.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: Just really caring about you know, the clients in general is very important.

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Dennis Gill: Got it got it. So 2 things. What I learned from this is the hiring is the key, and second is the personal caring. Yep. So these are 2 things which our listeners can learn about. That second thing that I want to know from you is, how do you and your team work to tailor your services, to meet the specific needs and preferences of each individual client.

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Cesar Alonso: So you know, it starts with a care plan. We provide free Co free consultation to our, to our clients or potential clients. And we go. We go to our home. We ask, you know, certain questions that are important to create a care plan that is personalized for their needs. But at the time we’re gathering all their information.

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Cesar Alonso: For example, what do they like to do? Do they like to put puzzles together? Do they like to go shopping

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Cesar Alonso: some of them may like gardening, right? What’s their

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Cesar Alonso: and just or just learning their background what they did before they started needing care.

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Cesar Alonso: And just knowing those details is important because we learn similar details when we’re interviewing our caregivers.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: And when our caregivers tell us

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Cesar Alonso: I love gardening well, we know we have a match right and.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: That caregiver is gonna be perfect for the client that likes gardening.

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Dennis Gill: That likes happening. Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: So we just, you know, we tried to make it

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Cesar Alonso: you know, personal for us, and we try to make it fun for the clients to have someone

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Cesar Alonso: in their house giving them companionship and care.

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Dennis Gill: Got it. So the skilled and attributes that your clients are looking for, and that matches the criteria that your caregivers have perfect bang on.

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Dennis Gill: Okay. Next thing, what strategies have you found out to be most effective for keeping everyone informed? And on the same page? What’s your say on that?

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: That’s a very good question, and a really important one. I always believed throughout my career that

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Cesar Alonso: communication is key to delivering good service, but also simply put communication is key for you know, success of any business.

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Cesar Alonso: In care. In healthcare. It is even more important because any changes in conditions need to be communicated

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Cesar Alonso: immediately.

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Cesar Alonso: At the same time, you have to be careful because of confidentiality right, we need to maintain the confidentiality of the clients. So

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Cesar Alonso: we use software to help us every day. Especially when it comes to messaging. We do text messaging through a software that protects Co confidentiality and is hip hipaa certified.

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Dennis Gill: People, service, side, yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: And so we. We do this to maintain constant communication between clients, office staff, and caregivers, and we do the same for the care plan. If there is any update on the clients care plan.

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Cesar Alonso: We updated in our system, and we communicated immediately to our

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Cesar Alonso: caregivers. So they actually have to review their new care plan. Sign it electronically. And you know,
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Cesar Alonso: acknowledge that they’ve reviewed it.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, I get the point communication is the key listeners. So as you heard from Caesar’s mouth.

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Dennis Gill: and the next thing that I would like to ask you is somewhat linked to the previous question, that what are some of the ways you and your staff work to establish that sense of trust and repo with your clients. One thing is communication that you already told

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Dennis Gill: anything that you want to add on that.

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Cesar Alonso: Absolutely, I think.

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Cesar Alonso: I learned this one very quickly when I started the business.

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Dennis Gill: Okay.

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Cesar Alonso: In one of the 1st calls I had with a referral with a potential client. I over promised.

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Dennis Gill: Oh, okay.

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Cesar Alonso: You learned that? You know, I told the client. Yes, I can be there tonight. With my register, nurse, and you know at the end of the day we couldn’t make it on time.

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Dennis Gill: Oh!

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Cesar Alonso: And so you learn very quickly that
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Cesar Alonso: To gain people’s trust you need to be very, very transparent on what you can or cannot do.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: Don’t over promise. As a 1st step you have to say, Okay, this is what I’m going to try to do. Let me get back to you and confirm that I can actually do it.

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Cesar Alonso: Honesty, transparency is the 1st step for building a relationship.

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Cesar Alonso: And then.

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Cesar Alonso: after that, I think, being a good listener is key. When somebody’s telling you, you know anything. Really, you have to listen, and you have to be empathetic, and you have to be actively listening and understanding their point of view.

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Cesar Alonso: I think those 2, those 2 steps are key to begin a relationship with the right food.

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Cesar Alonso: You know, after that, obviously, you can

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Cesar Alonso: a little bit about your story, and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Why, you have this company and so on, but at the end of the day that it starts with listening and you know, building that trust.

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Dennis Gill: Got it. I feel empathy is very important in your line of business, and listening and over promising that I can say it goes with every field. I’ve been into the sales for many, many years. I know when I started my career over

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Dennis Gill: promising. It does take a little bit of points in starting off your career, but I know it should not be done. But everybody stay, learn step by step. You’re aware about that.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, okay, so

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Dennis Gill: okay, so one last thing, what advice would you give to other senior care? Franchisee owners who are looking to really hone in on a customer-centric approach. Very important.

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Cesar Alonso: Yeah.

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Cesar Alonso: I think I would. I would actually say, as you grow your business.

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Cesar Alonso: keep. Keep in mind what you used to do when you were new.

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Cesar Alonso: Because when you’re new you tend to do more things you tend to go more out of your way to

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Cesar Alonso: make make the clients happy, and and maybe as as customers, or as I’m sorry as companies grow, they lose that sense of

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Cesar Alonso: you know, being close to a client or listening to clients directly.

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Cesar Alonso: So just just keep that mindset of.

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Cesar Alonso: you know, entrepreneurship, and keep that mindset of treating your clients as if they were the most important part, each, each and every single client, as if they are the most important part of your business.

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Cesar Alonso: technology. I, I would say, can also help in this sense, if you can automate tasks that are not customer client centric, do that because as an owner you want to be focusing on the client

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Cesar Alonso: period. Right? You don’t want to be wasting time. You know, doing finances or something else when you can be focusing on growing your business through that client or customer service.

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Dennis Gill: Got it. So not taking. Granted your clients, that’s the best thing listeners can take a note of that. So

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Dennis Gill: that was pretty insightful. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Caesar, for sharing your expertise with us.

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Dennis Gill: and to our lovely audience. Thank you for tuning in until next time. I’m Dennis Gill, signing off.

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Dennis Gill: Thank you, everybody.