"After a solid week of working days and nights we had put together a strategy for online classes," says founder Charlotte Salter
At a time when businesses are dealing with the greatest challenge they’ve ever faced, the award-winning Debutots franchise has set to work ensuring it uses innovation and technology to build on its already-excellent reputation as one of the UK’s best children’s services franchise.
Debutots offers a unique blend of storytelling and dramatic play for children, delivering classes in schools, nurseries and to parents in local venues. Debutots founder, Charlotte Salter, says: “We knew that if those settings closed then we would close too. It was a bleak outlook and we had to innovate fast and work through ways to ensure all our franchisees could keep generating an income.”
The result was Debutots Online. Charlotte explains: “When we realised that school closures were inevitable we went into overdrive. After a solid week of working days and nights we had put together a strategy for online classes. We wrote procedures, policies and drafted amended class plans for two options moving forward: live online classes and pre-recorded classes. We carefully selected online platforms, software and set our graphic designer to work, branding our online classes. Pulling all this together enabled us to give our franchisees the best opportunity to retain their customers in the first instance and generate new online business in the second instance.”
The first Debutots pre-recorded session was delivered by a franchisee on 20th March and the feedback for it was hugely positive. It was a huge relief for the team who had been working so hard to find a way to continue delivering Debutots classes in a time of no social contact. Charlotte adds: “It was a huge relief when the online classes were so well received. We knew then we were going to be able to give children a sense of their usual life, their usual routine and our live classes were going to give them that opportunity to engage with each other and bring them that sense of community which is more important than ever during tough times like these.”
Just a few weeks after launching the online classes, Debutots franchisees have been able to retain customers and strengthen the relationships they have with those customers. Moreover, Debutots has helped provide solutions, bring happiness and some relief in difficult times.
While a huge challenge, the exercise has proved why Debutots was recently a very deserving winner of the much-coveted industry award for Best Children’s Services Franchise. Speaking about the recent difficulties, one franchisee said: “Throughout the transition time our franchisor has been available at all hours for help and advice. We have found ourselves switching from feeling stressed and afraid in our daily lives to being at our most productive. The supportive nature of the network means there is always someone there to help if you are struggling, and the next day it might be you who is able to offer support to someone else. We have loved sharing our successes so far, from pictures of little ones joining in, to amazing feedback from parents.”
It’s not just the franchisees who have been grateful that Debutots have found a way to continue to offer the popular sessions. Parents have been delighted with the ability to continue classes with their children. Some have said the social interaction has brought tears to their eyes and others have had their children mesmerised by the classes, which have held their attention in a way that no other online videos or interaction has.
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