3 Top Franchises Pleasing Customers

BusinessWeek’s fourth annual customer service awards is handed out not to companies like American Express but also to franchise brands. Out of 25 customer service champions, here are three franchisors from this year’s list of winners.

• #11. Ace Hardware. The company expanded its mystery shopping program last year to include 1,300 of its 4,400 stores.

• #21. Panera Bread. The chain in 2009 worked on pleasing store employees and managers through cash bonus and other incentives. Those happier employees have helped bring in 2% more traffic in the firm’s third quarter while the industry’s traffic declined 4%.

• #23. TrueValue. The franchisor in 2009 used 95 of its retail consultants to help 5,000 franchises datamine feedback to figure how to better serve their customers and to minimize store costs by maintaining the right inventory to sell.