
How ohDEER Franchise Improved Owner Communication & Engagement by 34%
The ohDEER franchise owners felt 46% more involved in decision making and the brand improved its communication score by 34% in just one year—here’s how.
Franchisee communication and engagement are two crucial elements of any successful franchise system. When franchisees feel heard by their corporate team and connected with their fellow owners, satisfaction in their business goes up.
That’s why it’s so impressive to see the huge jumps in both system-wide communication scores and feeling involved in decision-making scores in the Franchisee Satisfaction surveys from the ohDEER franchise system from 2023-2024.
Meet the Brand: ohDEER All-Natural Mosquito Control
ohDEER is the all-natural pest control franchise taking the $20 billion pest control industry by storm. Their products are kid, pet, and environment-safe, offering a welcome alternative to harsh chemicals traditionally used in this space.
The ohDEER franchise system started using the franchisee satisfaction surveys very early on in its growth, helping to establish its baseline scores and setting the standard of franchisee feedback at the start of its franchising journey.
Colleen Upham, co-founder of ohDEER, explains that they were referred to FBR pretty quickly in their franchising journey and have loved how the surveys have impacted their growth.
“Each year we get better as a franchisor because of the surveys. Our franchisees love them and now they want to see even more data from other parts of the business, ” says Upham.
Upham also shared that the ohDEER team has been excited by their owners’ responses to data. They are now looking to set up more standardization in their internal business operations to utilize even more insightful data as their system grows.
The Challenge: Improve Communication & Engagement
The ohDEER team reviewed the results from their last two years of surveys to determine their focus projects for the coming year and landed on training and operations improvements.
“A mistake we’ve made in the past was we fixed a bunch of things that had been brought up in the survey results, but we didn’t ask for feedback or collaboration,” said Upham.
This is a common challenge met by franchise systems.
The ohDEER leadership team was listening and taking action on their franchisee feedback and getting great results that way. However, their communication score was still one of their lowest 5 scoring areas—the issue was the communication around the problem-solving process.
“So we started to bring the owners on board a lot earlier in the process to get that buy-in,” explained Upham.
One great example was when the ohDEER team shared a new operations and data dashboard idea with their franchise owners and got feedback and buy-in early on in that project.
By changing when they brought projects to franchisees for feedback and using more pilot projects, the ohDEER system saw franchisees rate ‘feeling involved in decisions’ 46% higher this year compared to last year—a huge jump in their Franchisee Satisfaction Index (FSI) score in this area.
Small Changes Make a Big Impact
Bryan Vohsing, Director of Marketing and Operations shared another communication change the ohDEER team made in the past year that has created a huge impact.
“We did EVERY monthly meeting with our owners last year. It feels small but it makes a big difference to our franchise owners,” says Vohsing.
In the past, the monthly meeting with franchise owners had occasionally dropped off the calendar, but based on their 2023 survey results the ohDEER team committed heavily to doing it every single month of the year in 2024.
As another communication improvement, ohDEER also increased their email communication with franchise owners by sending a Friday recap email on top of their regular monthly newsletters.
“Showing up and communicating consistently really built their confidence in us,” explains Vohsing.
These communication efforts made by the ohDEER franchise team show how big a difference can be made in just one year. The system-wide communication score increased by 34% from 2023 to 2024 with help from these strategic improvements from their passionate leadership team.
See the Results
ohDEER’s commitment to franchisee satisfaction and engagement combined with their thoughtful actions rooted in data have created some amazing results.
- Increased overall FSI score from 62-78 over 4 years.
- Hired two new leadership roles to support brand growth.
- Innovation & Creativity improved 34% YOY.
- Strong Culture scored 23% higher this year.
- Franchisees Feeling Involved In Decisions scored 46% higher this year.
- Trust the Franchisor scored as 100% agree.
- Enjoy Operating My Business area scored as 100% agree.
We’re so impressed with all the ohDEER franchise system has accomplished using the valuable data from their franchisee satisfaction survey and can’t wait to see how their brand grows in the coming year. Download the Case Study
Interested in getting results like these for your own system? Franchise Business Review helps franchise brands at all phases of growth to understand your franchisee satisfaction and identify areas to improve. Contact us to get started!
Related Resource: The 10 Biggest Roadblocks to Franchise Performance
Want to grow your system? Don’t let these common roadblocks slow you down!
Download our free guide to learn:
- Why franchisees often have unrealistic expectations for their business
- Why you could be wasting money on your development efforts
- How to get actionable data to measure progress and drive growth