BrightStar Care Turns to FranConnect to Meet Growing Demand for Senior Home Health Care Services

Caring for the ever-increasing number of older Americans is putting a significant strain on hospitals, patients and families. While this growing demand for senior care challenges the limitations of traditional health care, it’s introducing opportunities for entrepreneurs to be part of the solution, and a solution that brings care and support to where seniors prefer it—the home. That’s where the fast-growing franchise BrightStar Care comes in—a full service home healthcare organization.

The Home Care Association of America predicts that people aged 65 or older will grow from 56 million in 2020 to as much as 84 million by 2050. The Home Care Association of America also predicts that 70 percent of adults aged 65-plus will need assistance with daily living activities at some point in their lives as their health declines. Traditionally, when additional help was needed, children and family members cared for aging loved ones. But today, significant gaps have emerged with this model, and as America’s overall population ages, the total population of potential family caregivers is shrinking.

BrightStar Care was founded to meet that demand. BrightStar Care is the recognized leader in the home health care franchise industry, providing a proven business model, infrastructure, training and ongoing support necessary to help franchisees launch and run successful home-care businesses. Most home care companies limit their service offerings to companion care for seniors, but BrightStar Care provides the full range of in-home care services from meal prep and light housekeeping to medication management and infusion.

Today there are more than 300 locations throughout the United States and Canada. The brand’s main goal is to continue growing the business while delivering and improving the support, resources and programs that keep the franchisees successful. To help meet those growth goals for new franchise development, opening new stores and in building local marketing, BrightStar Care turned to FranConnect franchise management software for help.

BrightStar Care took a multi-pronged approach with FranConnect. Because its franchise Sales CRM is built specifically for franchisors, FranConnect provides BrightStar Care with an all-inclusive foundation for its sales process. FranConnect Sky Sales has helped the BrightStar Care team manage all of its sales processes in one central place—allowing the brand to easily capture leads, determine conversion rates and lay out the timeline from leads to sales. Sales Managers can quickly put together an up-to-date list of where each candidate is in the process and what next steps need to be taken.

“FranConnect is a one-stop tool that allows me to efficiently manage my entire sales process. It keeps us on a well-defined sale process and within our targeted timelines, from lead origination to awarding franchises,” said Tony Padulo, the executive vice president of global franchise development.

FranConnect has guided new franchisees through the business process, too. BrightStar Care franchisees use FranConnect Sky Marketing Applications for lead nurturing and customer management, allowing them to easily create and run email campaigns, keep in touch with their customers and prospective customers and track success. Franchisees also use FranConnect’s reputation management capabilities to monitor their review scores across Google Plus, Facebook and Yelp. In fact, since using FranConnect, the brand has increased the number of online reviews by 45 percent, and its average general rating score has gone up by 27 percent.

“FranConnect franchise management software provides us with one central marketing dashboard from which we can access all of our marketing services. For example, every office can link to their Net Promoter score dashboard directly from FranConnect. It’s organized in a way so franchisees can get to what they want very quickly,” said Matt Quandt, BrightStar Care’s senior director of marketing. “The lead nurturing and reputation management capabilities also make a big difference. Being a franchisee is challenging no matter what industry you’re in. And FranConnect gives our franchisees the visibility they need into what consumers are saying about their business in one place.”