Regardless of who collects your audit data, this rich source of information and its business impact can be overlooked. The impact of a slip in brand standards can have a dramatic impact on sales and reputation.
Almost all multi-location businesses use some form of audit to measure execution against brand standards. Some companies outsource these audits, others use internal staff for site audits. Regardless of who collects the data, this rich source of information and its business impact can be overlooked. The impact of a slip in brand standards can have a dramatic impact on your company’s sales and reputation, potentially causing irreversible damage to your brand.
Here are four tips for ensuring that you leverage your audit data for maximum impact:
- Measure what matters. Ensure that the audit criteria is relevant, constructive and measurable. We have seen audits that contain hundreds of questions. Take time to step back and ask whether all of the questions are necessary. Do some questions receive 99% or 100% virtually every audit? If so, is this question truly needed? Are safety or regulatory violations clearly called out—and do you have appropriate scoring to weight these concerns?
- Allow for variable questions like promotional campaigns. Marketing is at the core of most sales strategies; being able to confidently track their success is pivotal for ROI. Monitoring these campaigns can then allow you benchmark and identify best practices.
- Use technology for data collection and reporting. The days of pen and paper are gone. You can help your auditors be more efficient and lower the costs of data collection by using technology. Applications supporting auditors are available on smartphones and tablets and should support the ability to load a multitude of questionnaires to be used in the field. Perhaps more importantly, the questionnaires should load into your brand standards and customer experience (CX) reporting platform so all data for every location can be seen in one place.
- Analyze audit data to get insights. Audit data can tell you three things: 1) Who are the repeat offenders who frequently make the same mistakes? Do any of those mistakes create risk for the brand? 2) How does audit data interplay with other CX data? Do those locations with poor audit scores also have poor customer experience scores—and which audit questions predict the customer experience score? 3) How do audit scores relate to financial metrics like lowered costs of service (number of calls, social posts, or web comments that you must field)? How do audit scores relate to revenue?
To help you leverage your audit data, Market Force has developed its new Eyes:On audit application. The app also provides functions such as offline use, image capture, geo-location technology and is fully integrated with KnowledgeForce reporting platform.
Learn more about our effective compliance audit solutions by scheduling a briefing or giving us a call at 1-877-329-9621.
