The Key to Boosting Financial & Fee Satisfaction: With Image One Franchise
Image One used trust-building techniques and communication strategies to raise financial & fee satisfaction scores by 15% in four years.
When a franchisee first joins a franchise system, they’ve just finished going through an in-depth training and onboarding process, so their understanding of how the franchisor and franchisee relationship works is fresh in their minds.
After several years (or decades) in a franchise system, even happy, profitable franchisees may struggle to understand, or remember, how the zee-zor relationship is designed to work for both parties’ benefit.
FBR sends out thousands of satisfaction surveys every year, and we see repeatedly how satisfaction with overall financial picture and paying fees to the franchisor is consistently a low-scoring area for franchise brands.
Image One Franchise saw a huge increase in the fee satisfaction on their surveys in just four years—and it wasn’t due to any fancy programs or initiatives. For them, it was all about communication techniques, and trust-building.
Meet the Brand: Image One Facility Solutions
Image One Facility Solutions is a franchise offering commercial cleaning solutions with a focus on customer satisfaction. They use their proprietary IntelliClean™️ system to leverage technology to customize their cleaning solutions for each project.
Beyond their systems, support, and operations excellence, Image One stands out with their approach to people and relationships.
“But that’s what most franchise brands say,” chuckles Tim Conn, President of Image One Franchise.
Using the FBR Franchisee Satisfaction Surveys started from a desire to validate what they were saying on their own website and sales calls.
“I always knew third-party validation makes a big difference. We can say whatever we want about our brand, but the third-party validation and survey numbers really back up what we’re saying in a meaningful way,” shares Conn.
Conn and his team have leveraged their survey data strategically since they started working with FBR in 2017. But especially in the past four years or so, from 2021 – 2025, the Image One Franchise team saw some massive results and score improvements—particularly in franchisee satisfaction with overall financial picture and fees paid to the franchisor.
The Challenge: Improve Financial & Fee Understanding
“We definitely weren’t always top in those financial and fee-related scores,” shares Conn when we asked him about the improvement in this tricky survey category.
“I think in all franchise brands, franchisees struggle to understand the value that the zor provides. They get it in the beginning, but after a few years, it can feel like your franchisor is just collecting those fees and royalties for their own benefit.”
Based on the thousands of surveys sent out through FBR each year, Conn is absolutely correct.
The question was, how did Image One satisfaction scores go from 69 – 80 FSI (up nearly 16%) in just four years in the “The fees I pay my franchisor are fair” category? And go up five points in “overall financial picture” in just one year?
Communicate Often About the Zee-Zor Relationship
Instead of assuming your franchisees understand where their fees and royalties go, emphasize and communicate consistently about how their fees and royalties are used to help the entire brand, including their own business.
Image One sends monthly newsletters where they continuously detail the efforts of the overall marketing brand fund, what initiatives the corporate team are working on, and any updates to the system.
They also meet directly with their franchisees, creating 1:1 communication channels so franchisees feel heard and understood, and where communication errors can be cleared up immediately.
“We communicate a lot in those 1:1 calls. We offer coaching on how to identify and nurture the most profitable accounts for their business. We focus on goal setting. We discuss exit planning in the first few years they’re in business—I think this all helps build trust with our owners from an early point,” shares Conn.
Don’t Assume Franchisees Know Where Your Efforts Are Going
One notable program Image One Franchise has employed is matching, dollar for dollar, the marketing fund fees that their franchisees contribute.
“We’ve always done that,” says Conn, “but we started communicating it a lot more regularly in recent years.”
Conn and his team believe that it’s all about showing their owners that the corporate team is invested in their success. Initiatives like matching the marketing fund helps to back up their words with actions. And although this program has been around for many years, communicating consistently about it with owners has helped increase that awareness immensely.
Put Corporate Dollars Into Franchisee Growth
Another unique approach to fees and financials that Image One takes is to always trial marketing strategies or new programs with corporate dollars—before putting franchisee dollars behind them.
“If it’s something new, that I’m not sure will work quite yet, we pay for that,” shares Conn. “If it works well in the pilot programs, that’s when we may roll it out for everyone and have them start paying for it—but I want to ensure it works first!”
These are the kinds of efforts that can really validate the message that the corporate team truly cares about franchisee success.
How Survey Completion Increased by 20%
When asked about how Image One increased their franchisee satisfaction survey participation by 20% in 2025, Conn spoke with candor.
“Oh – We work hard to get replies to the surveys! We do calls, texts, and emails in several rounds, up to three times a week, to get those answers. We REALLY value the feedback so we’ve really stepped up our efforts to get franchisees to reply.”
The efforts certainly paid off, and Conn emphasized how important the Image One team finds the survey data.
“The value from the FBR surveys is huge. We have amazing ROI on them—maybe not with an exact dollar amount attached—but seeing those results each year is worth its weight in gold.”
Once Image One receives their survey data, they communicate the results to their owners—both in their newsletter and in calls. They highlight winning areas, and acknowledge any low scores with a call to action that anyone who would like to can reach out to the corporate team directly to help work through any issues.
“Sometimes, by sharing the average scores and results from across the system, we get owners reaching out who are struggling in certain areas because they realize others aren’t having the same issues. This allows us to help them and often clear up challenges as they arise,” says Conn.
The Image One Franchise Survey Results
The way in which Image One handles building relationships and genuine trust with their franchise owners is truly impressive, and seeing the satisfaction survey results improve so significantly over the past four years is a testament to their efforts.
Here are just a few of the highlights from Image One’s survey results:
- “I trust my franchisor” scores increased from 86 in 2021 to 92 in 2025.
- Overall satisfaction scores up from 79 in 2021 to 85 in 2025.
- “The fees I pay my franchisor are fair” increased from 69 in 2021 to 80 in 2025.
- Overall financial picture score is 78—up 5 points in one year.
- 100% of franchisees agree or strongly agree that they respect the franchisor.
- 100% would recommend the franchise to others.
- 100% agree or strongly agree that they enjoy being part of the organization.
- Since 2021, the survey completion rate has gone from 63% to 83% in 2025.
Interested in getting results like these for your own system? Franchise Business Review helps franchise brands at all phases of growth to understand franchisee satisfaction, lead generation, and validation. Schedule a free demo today to get started!
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