One Brand, One Phone Experience: Why Franchises Are Switching to Gabbit

Your Brand Starts Before the Customer Walks In

Franchises spend a lot of effort making every location look and feel the same: the same signage, the same menu, the same uniforms. Then a customer calls two of your stores and gets two completely different experiences. One store answers with a polished greeting and a clear menu of options. The other rings eight times and goes to a generic voicemail box that’s been full since spring. For a lot of customers, that phone call is their first impression of your brand. It should sound like one brand, no matter which location they dial.

What an Inconsistent Phone Experience Costs a
Franchise

When each location uses a different phone service provider and sets things up its based on each provider’s features, a few problems show up again and again:

• Mixed messages about the brand. Different greetings, different hold music (or dead air), different wording for the same promotion.
• Missed calls during the busiest hours. A store without a ring group or call queue lets calls go unanswered while staff are tied up with customers.
• Outdated information. Holiday hours, seasonal specials and new services get updated at some locations and not others.
• No easy way to roll out a change. A brand-wide update means asking every owner to call their own carrier and hoping it gets done.

Each of these is small on its own. Across six, twelve,twenty or more locations, they add up to
callers who aren’t sure what to expect from your brand.

One Phone Experience Across Every Location

With every location on Gabbit’s cloud phone system, you can build a standard call experience once and use it everywhere:

• The same professional greeting. Unlimited auto attendants mean every store can answer with the brand’s approved welcome and menu options, day or night.
• The same hold message. Callers on hold hear your current promotion or brand message instead of silence.
• The same call flow. Ring groups and call queues route calls the same way at every store, so customers get answered quickly even during a rush.
• Brand-wide updates in one place. Changes are made through Gabbit’s online portal instead of store by store, carrier by carrier.

The result: whether a customer calls your original location or your newest one, they hear the
same brand.

Every Owner Still Runs Their Own Store

Consistency shouldn’t mean taking control away from franchisees. A store owner knows their
staff, their hours and their customers better than anyone at headquarters.
That’s why each location keeps the controls that matter locally:

• Its own local phone number, so regulars and nearby customers reach the store they
  know.
• Its own hours and after-hours rules, including holiday closures and late nights.
• Its own staff and ring groups, so calls go to the right people on the right shift.
• Its own special lines, like fax orders and alarm panels, which Gabbit’s system can
  handle alongside regular calls.

The brand sets the standard. Each owner fills in the details for their store. And when something
goes wrong, every location calls the same 24/7 U.S.-based support team.
As one of Gabbit’s restaurant customers put it, the system handles “my fax orders, alarm, and
multiple locations,” with simplified billing and an online portal that makes managing six locations
easy.

What to Sort Out Before You Switch

A shared phone experience works best when the brand and its owners agree on a few things up
front:

• Who controls what. Decide which settings are brand standards (greeting, hold
  message, menu options) and which each owner manages (hours, staff, local routing).
• Your franchise agreement. Check whether it says anything about phone systems,
  ordering lines or approved vendors.
• Existing contracts. Some stores may have early termination fees with their current
  carrier. Time each switch to when those end.
• Internet at each location. Cloud calling depends on a reliable connection, so ask about
  backup options for any store with spotty service.

It’s also worth asking any provider, Gabbit included, for a side-by-side comparison against what
each location pays today, so the decision is based on real numbers.

The Bottom Line

Your customers don’t think of your stores as separate businesses. They think of them as one
brand. A phone system that gives every location the same greeting, hold message and call flow,
while letting each owner run their own store, makes your brand sound as consistent as it looks.