Club Z! Tutoring
Live Oak Gives Club Z! Lessons in the Power of Web Automation
The Challenge
With more than 450 franchised locations worldwide, Club Z! is the world's largest in-home tutoring provider. With so many franchises and locations, Club Z! was looking for new ways to help their franchisees market their business effectively and handle their customers more efficiently.
For example, franchisees were losing business because they weren’t always available to answer calls from prospective clients. After all, they might be working with clients. “The corporate call center was constantly congested with people calling for information, both students needing tutoring and people wanting to start their own Club Z! franchise,” remembers Carolyn Walden, director of operations for Club Z!
There was inefficiency on the marketing front, too. Each franchisee manages its own advertising but relies on corporate for specific graphic and ad elements. An in-house graphic designer at corporate headquarters was spending too much time customizing ads for each market.
The Solution
Live Oak 360 helped Club Z! harness the power of the Web and technology automation. When visitors land on the clubztutoring.com Web site, a new tool gathers zip code information and directs the prospect to detailed information about the right franchisee. An optional Web form can be filled out and sent instantly to the nearest franchisee.
Live Oak also designed a software program to automatically route unanswered calls coming into the franchisee location to the corporate office. And a Web-based scheduling program built by Live Oak lets headquarters set appointments for each franchisee.
To support local ad customization and free the corporate graphic designer to concentrate on new campaigns, Live Oak created a Web-based system that lets franchisees print ads and marketing collateral on the fly. With just a few clicks, franchisees can choose from 15 different types of collateral, customize the marketing material to the local market, and print out high-resolution Adobe Acrobat PDFs.
The Benefits
The corporate call center, which used to be deluged with phone calls, now handles client inquiries with ease, since many questions are addressed by the information-rich web site. What's more, franchisees no longer have to worry about missing business opportunities when they’re with clients. And busy franchisees can now create customized, high-quality ads on the fly.
"The new operating system that Live Oak 360 launched has become our standard, and it’s taken our fast-growing business to the next level," says Walden.
