A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went back east to visit friends and family. On arriving at the airport in Montreal, we gathered our luggage and went off to collect our rental car. Based on previous experience I had no particular loyalties, so on this occasion I'd reserved a car with Enterprise based solely on the fact I had a coupon offering a free day.On approaching the counter, we where promptly greeted by a very pleasant young man, who while going through the usual paper work, asked a number of questions about our plans for the week, offered some very helpful directions based on current knowledge of trouble spots (road repairs are never ending in Quebec) and engaged us in a little lighthearted banter about driving in and around Montreal.
On expressing our appreciation and commenting on his great service (something I try to make a habit of doing whenever I come across it) he brought out what he called the office's 'Stanley Cup' for service delivery. About two and a half feet tall, it was a bit garish for my liking, but he was clearly proud of it.
After congratulating him and his colleagues, we were shown to our car by an equally pleasant young lady who enthusiastically pointed out that it only had 11 kilometers on it (just over 6 miles for my American readers). She also asked if we had any questions and assured we didn't, wished us a pleasant journey.
As is so often the case with vacations, the days flew by and in what seemed like no time we found ourselves back at the airport returning the car. Before I had a chance to even put it in park, a smiling Enterprise attendant appeared as if by magic and unloading our bags onto a luggage cart. He'd already keyed in the licence number on of those little hand held devices and while waiting for the receipt to print, asked us how we had enjoyed our trip. After a little pleasant conversation, he inquired as per what we though of the Enterprise customer experience, then closed with what I thought was a truly brilliant question - "Is there anything we could have done better?"
Thinking back to the booking process, the greeting and the return, the best I could come up with was "Next time I rent from Enterprise, I'd prefer a car with a few less miles on it." He glanced down at his little device, which clearly shows the mileage in and out, smiled and wished us a pleasant trip home.
I'm not so naive as to not recognize this as a prompted question, or for that matter, the whole customer experience as being carefully engineered at corporate headquarters, but so what. The
delivery was sincere and the whole experience left me with the impression that these guys are good, as well as a great tip for all concerned with delivering a great customer experience.
If like Enterprise you are serious about delivering a great customer experience, when all is said and done the right question to ask would have to be:
Is there anything we could have done better?
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Hi Jim, great article, as always! To answer your question in the email pointing us to this post, about driving more traffic to your blog, I have a one word answer. Articles.
ReplyDeleteSubmitting to some of the best online magazines, "ezines", where you're also given the opportunity to promote your blog through appropriate links, is a great way to get more traffic.
I've become a so-called Expert Author with www.ezinearticles.com who are probably the best of all. But there are plenty more.
Good luck! Mike
Such a simple question -- I agree that there is much to gain. Right now I have three thoughts on your blog post, and I look forward to the responses of others.
ReplyDelete1. Some people are afraid to ask the question not because of what they might hear, but because they are afraid of the work to be done to correct the problem. It's so much easier to maintain the status quo. Action needs to be fostered.
2. Unfortunately, some of the most valuable responses to this question would come from the customers whom we don't get to ask: the customers that for some reason get turned off our product or service and don't come back or feel any obligation to tell us what we could have done better.
3. The question, asked properly a few times, can generate (in its asking -- even before answers are received) a desire to know the answer. If the feedback is actionable and acted upon, it encourages people to continue asking the question. Even when engineered by head office, the question has the potential to engender genuine interest in the answer, because it makes people feel personally genuine in its asking. A rewarding cycle...
Part 1
ReplyDeleteAlthough I rarely comment on your excellent Blogs, I read them all, avidly. However, Enterprise car hire really hit the spot for me. Here's why:
Julie and I are sneaking a few days away from the rat race in Cornwall where I continue to live my mantra - I WILL NOT PAY PREMIUM PRICES FOR THE LOGO AND BRAND... I only pay for a customer experience. Too often this results in a walk past brand x, even though the masses are pouring in just to say they’ve got the T shirt.
In Padstow there is a supreme Brand. A family business has expanded into a theme which has earned the town of Padstow its nick-name - Padstein. Rick and Jill Stein have built a small empire based on premium pricing of wholesome, well prepared and well presented fish. No opportunity to Brand anything is lost and accoutrements such as Beer, Wine, Books, Recipes, Cooking Lessons, a Patisserie and a Delicatessen, as well as a separate shop to buy the entire product range, have taken over the town. It mints money.
Since our alternative Fish and Chip shop was closed and it was too late to grab a snack anywhere else, I did what I have avoided doing for the last 16 years. I paid for Stein's fish and chips and stood on the quayside eating it with a frown. Julie asked what was wrong. I told her these F&C were the best I’d ever tasted and that I was actually irritated the Brand had met its promise. She agreed, but noted we had to wait to be served, wait to pay, been virtually ignored during the wait and that the eventual distribution of the food had been sullen and graceless. I could only agree.
Intent on testing the process again, we returned a few days later to sample the same dish in the adjacent restaurant - a very cheery establishment, well lit, with good clean surfaces. Our waitress greeted us charmlessly, waved boredly for us to 'sit anywhere', failed to return to take our order until called, expressed incredulity that we did not want to partake of the other products on sale, took our order and retired with nary a smile or a thank you. Her colleague later served us the meal with a mantra of ''hope you enjoy your meal'' - as in ‘I don't give a damn’ but, at least she smiled.
The food was excellent - the service… well pretty much what we have come to expect in most outlets in UK - BAD! What really irked me, my wife, and fellow diners near us was the slipshod delivery of an otherwise perfect meal in delightful surroundings… and when we paid, I received the other mantra... ''was everything ok'' - as in, ‘I am really bored and have not a jot of interest in your reply.’
(continued in the following comment)
Part 2 - continued from above
ReplyDeleteI now turn to your blog. The Enterprise team delivered the whole product - the ‘meal’ and the service. Yes, it was a Corporate engineered message, but you wrote that it was genuinely delivered and implied that it was consistent from all those employed. The result - you will undoubtedly use that Brand again, and, you have provided FREE marketing to a whole lot of colleagues who value, and will pay for premium service.
The trick is not how to engineer the service standards, but how to communicate them to ALL staff, to ensure that they are delivered consistently and, the most important part, to involve the customers in the process.
I have waffled longer than even I would normally do on this topic, BUT, until we as customers require acceptable standards, we won't get them. Until corporates recognise they can do better, not just through product improvement, but through a search for perfection in delivery, we are doomed to suffer excellent fish and chips, served by morons.
In Vancouver you guys are lucky. You have one Jim Francis, who understands the requirements here, and is an accomplished deliverer of ‘how to’ to corporates who recognise the need to obtain customer loyalty though common sense-delivery of BRAND at the point of contact.
Well done to Enterprise. I shall now seek an opportunity to use their UK service and, if found wanting, let them know how it is done In Montreal.
Jim, next time you are in UK, I will take you to Steins for F&C. You can then see whether my 'feedback' has had effect. If not, you will have a potential new customer!
P.S. You are still using free coupons products, you tight old rascal. Well, perhaps coupons tied to delivery are a useful tool after all!
Regards Ray
I tried it and surprise, surprise, it works. One of my customers actualy spent about 15 minutes explaining how I could help him with a problem I didn't even realize he was having. The net result, we solved it and I got a nice little piece of additional business I wouldn't have otherwise.
ReplyDeleteCool eh?
You are right on the money. People complain when they are not treated as expected and then when they are they complain that it was engineered at the corporate level. Damned if you do damned if you don't.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to really see how not to handle a customer go look at new houses. We built about five years ago and I can tell you it was a real eye opener. One agent after showing me the townhome, and I was ready to buy this one, said “No, we don't do that anymore.” when I asked if they could build it without the 18" wall that formed a separation for a quasi dining room. He went on to say “The last time we did the labors didn't understand and we had to rip out some of the construction and redo it.” He did suggest I could have the wall ripped out once I moved in.
So what he is telling me the people that build his houses do not speak English and are incompetent. This was a high dollar development. I passed and moved I on to another. This time, my wife and I liked everything except we wanted to flip flop two rooms. After working over her boss the agent said they would not do it. I went alone to the next, which I liked, but once again I wanted a small change. I mentioned to the agent what I wanted and she uttered "not if you buy it from me". Needless to say my wife never even saw that one.
Hello! Who is the buyer here?
I think the thing that frustrated me so much is in the car business, you are dealing with vehicles in the multiples of $10,000.00 and have the choice of hundreds of options; here I am looking at buying something in multiples of $100,000 and being told I cannot have what I want. The car dealer usually bends over backwards to accommodate the customer. Houses run easily 10 times the cost of cars and nobody wants to accommodate you.
I finally found a builder that let me make changes, in fact one of the changes I made he incorporated into his future builds. I should have got a royalty, lol. There are still many businesses out there that just do not get customer satisfaction
My husband and I rented a car in San Francisco from Alamo. We picked it up at the airport, and were supposed to return it downtown at a certain time. But the location was closed when we got there. In fact, the location's regularly posted hours did not extend to the due time of the rental--something we had asked the clerk about when getting directions. So, we took it to the airport the next morning and returned it there. It was late, and we figured we'd have to pay for an extra day, and we had to pay to park it in our hotel, which I'm sure you can guess is not cheap in San Francisco. Both of those charges were annoying, since they weren't our fault. Plus, we had cut short an out-of-town trip to get the car back in time, and if we'd known we couldn't return it we would have just stayed out of the city later. But when we got to the airport, the attendant commented that they were about to phone the police, b/c they thought we had stolen it! And he wasn't joking. Things just got worse from there. He didn't believe that we'd been given wrong information about the open hours, and was generally--I don't exaggerate--hostile. After we got home, we made a complaint to Alamo, using their central complaint system. Then what followed was an at first bewildering and then annoying game of phone tag. They phoned at home. I phoned back and said, Call me at work. Then, repeatedly, I'd find that they'd called at home when I'd said I would be at work, and at work when I would be home. They left messages at my work in the evening, and at my home in the middle of the day. When I called back, I always got voicemail. Finally I just gave up. Sort of like when a friend is always "busy," I got the message. They did not want to speak to me about my complaint. Every single person we had contact with at Alamo was somewhere on the range from apathetic to, as I said, hostile. They obviously don't care about keeping our business, and so they don't have it. Plenty of other car rental companies!
ReplyDelete