Train, Support, Connect, Invest. These are the main pillars of our organization and the core ideas around anything we do. As a company we have always strived to encourage communication between franchise consultants and franchisors. We understand that through effective communication businesses will be able to develop lasting relationships that ultimately lead to successful practices.
The FBA is pleased to announce the release of our latest feature to the Connect platform available within the FBA Members website. This powerful new tool will further enhance our memberships communication capabilities and consolidate several commonly used external services. Core features enable our members to communicate directly with one another through instant chats, group chat rooms and video conferences. They will also be able to fully utilize screen sharing and file swapping capabilities with anyone on the site.
Through this feature our membership will be able to conduct introductions and crucial meetings all through one location. With any features we add user experience is a top priority for us. Anything we implement, no matter how complex, must be easy for our members to use. Our chat and meeting features accomplish this beautifully all while being elegantly hidden away if a user chooses to abstain from participating.
Since implementing this feature we have already seen and heard several stories of our membership embrace the new system. Megan Kaczmarek, FBA’s Franchisor Relations Coordinator recently told us:

“I was going through the initial walkthrough of the FBA Members site with a new Franchisor who had just joined and before I even got the the Chat feature a Broker was instant messaging them asking if they had a territory available in Delaware! The Franchisor did so it turned out to be a really great introduction to FBA Membership!”

From an internal level we will now be stepping away from external services, such as Join.me, to support our members. The new platform provides us with everything offered by their paid service. In the future when a member needs to be shown something or walk us through what they are experiencing on their screen we will be able to use these new features.
FBA members who communicate with one another are also provided with the option to save a log of their communications so that they can archive them for their records.
What do you think of the upgrades to our Connect features? Feel free to let us know in the comment space below!