“Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise Can Teach You About Creating Lifetime Customers,” by author Kirk Kazanjian tells the Enterprise Rent-A-Car story and how it pursued lasting success.
Photo: Enterprise
A new industry friend ordered me a book online this year as we shared an Uber ride from an airport to an event.
I had just admitted how embarrassed I was during my first full year at Auto Rental News about missing the meaning of L.O.R.: It’s Length of Rental, not Loss of Rental, and does not mean the loss of use of a rental fleet vehicle. I won’t reexplain the concept since most of you have understood L.O.R. for years. But it took a reader email and a corrected headline to set me straight.
Appropriately enough, my friend bought me “Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise Can Teach You About Creating Lifetime Customers ” by Kirk Kazanjian to help ground my understanding of rental fleets and operations. Published in 2007, the book tells the Enterprise Rent-A-Car story and how it pursued lasting success. Although it was written before the advent of mass social media, apps, iPhone adoption, and contactless rental, the principles still rule.
I know the book has circulated widely in the rental car sector, but for me the story connected certain business values and priorities that deserve renewed exposure because they easily fade, or companies shirk them.
Here are a few with my twist:
Ethics Should Rank First
I’ll never understand why this value doesn’t lead every list of company values and mission statements. An emphasis on high ethics and standards protects everything everyone works for. Shady practices, excuses, and compromises may bring short-term convenience, but they will destroy a reputation. A company must provide autonomy and demand integrity. Employees should know they can admit an honest mistake but never lie and cover it up.
Take Care of Employees Who Take Care of Customers
They are second in the priorities behind ethics, but first among customer equals. We’ve heard the saying if you take care of employees, they will take care of customers. It’s about more than pay and perks; fixed salaries won’t make employees go above and beyond duties and job descriptions. Incentives and profit sharing do. A company must offer gainful upward paths and vocational rewards, a sense of teamwork and ownership, and a structure and culture that instills confidence and security.
Respect Fuels Customer Success
A content and motivated workforce will more readily listen to and help all types of customers, regardless of their personalities, moods, or needs. We like to respect everyone as smart and rational, which is fine. But they are also emotional and social, and how you make them feel about their experience builds loyalty. One of the greatest rewards of attentive customer service is alleviating temporary fears or miseries. Don’t charge customers for minor services that cost you nothing. Don’t haggle over price; treat all customers the same. Enterprise built its growth on happy returning customers.
Training Your Employees To Swim
Onboarding employees should be a phased, gradual orientation. An employer clinging to the old-school “figure it out and sink or swim” will see more employee mistakes and turnover. The antidote to fear and insecurity is preparation and knowledge. Invest in trained trainers with a coherent program who can focus on newbies.
Avoid the Cheap, Easy, Trendy Routes
This is top of my mind since I interviewed operators for this Fact Book who abhor the lowball $5 a day rental car rates that undercut industry quality and competition. Exceeding Customer Expectations cites other examples of how Enterprise learned early on that the price for quick short-term gains can result in the loss of the profit due to unforeseen consequences. Informed, measured, researched business planning is more likely to yield steady long-term growth.
Promoting Business Through Real Stories
This book reminded me of one other priority it doesn’t get into but speaks to our hyper-digital, always-on media age. I receive daily Google news alerts related to car rental that often compile the same negative customer failure incidents retold by one media outlet after another. These one-offs get more attention because they are unusual.
Auto Rental News managing editor and ICRS co-chairman Martin Romjue.
Photo: Bobit
However, a rental car operation that exceeds customer expectations will be filled with employees and customers who can share inspiring anecdotes, testimonies, and stories about daily successes. They should be tapped and encouraged to relay such stories on social media, in company marketing, and for media news releases.
Your customers and employees are the frontlines that boost your brand value and integrity.