Why our trainer accreditation is so important to the long term success of your business, and why we must work together to protect our brand.

A brand is a living creature all to itself and it can thrive, survive, suffer, or die. No brand is fixed in its condition and they all must work to maintain and improve constantly to retain their place amongst their customers favoured suppliers.

Brands are sustained by reputation and reputation is determined by performance against expectation and by consistency of that expectation. If we buy a brand name product we already know if we have bought on quality or on price, but we can be pleasantly surprised, or the opposite is the product does not match the expectation we had. The customer experience, which is very often sharded and collaborated then leads to the next iteration of brand expectations; and the brand has evolved either positively or negatively.

“A rising tide lifts all boats” – John F Kennedy 1963

Positive brand reinforcement is the key to long term success in many businesses. Once a brand reaches a certain status within a marketplace it becomes aspirational rather than optional. Some products become so dominant that people are often surprised to discover that friends or relatives don have brand x: think about the mobile phone market in the late 1990’s – chances are you owned a Nokia. Now ,for the majority of readers, it will be an Apple Iphone or a Samsung (possibly Hauwei if you’re in China)

“No ship is unsinkable” – Thomas Andrews 

The ‘Titanic’ of which Thomas Andrews was speaking was the ultimate example of brand failure. The reputation of the unsinkable ship cast a bright light on all the White Star company’s vessels. Truly an aspirational brand, and certainly a lot less so only days later when the vessel sank to the bottom of the ocean. There are other examples of top brands that collapsed almost overnight due to one big mistake, but this is rarely the method in which a brand dies, rather brands fall to ‘a death by a thousand cuts’

In the same way we expect our medical operations to be conducted by qualified surgeons, and at a good restaurant we expect the kitchen staff to be trained and led by a serious chef, our customers expect a certain level of quality from our products not just in the content but also in the delivery.

Imagine a hospital with a reputation for patients dying during routine procedures, or a restaurant where one in three times the customers experience severe food poisoning; would you choose to be the next diner or patient?

In each of these cases it could only be one or two bad staff members, but the bad reputation will carry to the entire organisation. This is the same for franchise organisations. For all the many benefits of a franchise there comes with it the risk that your reputation is not entirely your own and the responsibility to protect that reputation no just for yourself but for all the franchisees under the same umbrella.

The educational industry

In our industry of education, where we have already worked to ensure the highest quality of our provided content, there really is own one way we can exceed or fail to meet our customers’ expectations – in the delivery.

That is the reason that we at ISSA our so insistent that our programs are delivered by trainers who have been certified by us. By ensuring that the delivery quality is equal to the high content quality we have crafted for each of our programs we also ensure that our brand (and your reputation as a franchisee) is maintained and elevated.

The advantages of this are clear – better reputation means happier customers, more referrals, more repeat business, and an enhance status in your community. The disadvantages are also clear, and because those disadvantages impact not just you but every franchisee we have no option other than to end the relationship and distance ourselves from any operator who does not stick to the rules and whose disregard for their own business quality risks damaging the business of others.

In addition to delivering an inferior service to their customers franchisees who use non accredited trainers will discover they don’t have access to the full range of our resources and (without regret) their agreement will be cancelled.

In the same way that you wouldn’t eat in a restaurant with a bad reputation or choose to have surgery in a hospital that did not train its surgeons well, we should never consider allowing our customers children to be trained by people who are unqualified to do so.

Perhaps you are thinking this is a very negative article, but you would be mistaken. As one of our franchisees this article is the best thing you have read all day! Here is why:

1. Your business reputation is being elevated everyday by all the other franchisees
2. That reputation is being defended aggressively by ISSA and that benefits your business
3. Brand reputation is a living entity, and we are all working together to evolve it positively
4. Your business is part of a successful, stable, and aspirational brand
5. Getting new trainers accredited is easy, and a sign that your business is growing successfully
6. You are not in this alone, you are part of an army of franchisees with a common purpose
7. We have got your back! Let’s “Thrive Success” together!