Let me say right up front that I have a checkered past with the Enterprise rental car company. Every year, I get to tell a classic story from many years ago that involved my rental in Denver, Colorado, where their idea of service and my idea of service were diametrically opposed. Nevertheless, I found myself in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, early one fine fall morning, and I was not scheduled to speak until 5:30 that evening. My great-nephew is a senior at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota. Looking at a map, I found that the university was a touch over an hour away by car. Except I didn’t have a car, so I decided to rent one and meet him for lunch.
After texting to make sure he would be available (he was), I had to figure out where to get a car. I figured I could catch a cab back to the airport and then rent a car from there, but as I was searching for a local rental office, I saw there was an Enterprise location not far from my hotel. Hmmm, I thought, do I want to give them another chance? Then I remembered their jingle, “We’ll pick you up!” This was the very situation their pickup service was made for. So I called the local number and was transferred to the national reservations center. I asked if there were cars available and she assured me that there were. “So,” I asked, “when could someone come to pick me up?” She said she could not tell me until we completed the reservation.
So, fifteen minutes and enough questions to schedule open-heart surgery later, I had a reservation. “So,” I asked, again, “when can they come and pick me up?” They then gave me the local number so I could call them and find out. I reached the clerk at the local Enterprise office and she told me, “I not only don’t have a driver to pick you up, I won’t have a car until 5:00 this afternoon.” Clearly this would not work; I had to leave then if I was going to make lunch and get back in time. So I canceled the reservation. In less than five minutes, I had an AVIS reservation and was headed to the airport. Although I had wasted nearly thirty minutes with Enterprise, I did make it to Mitchell in time to have lunch with my great-nephew and had a great time catching up.
But customer service shouldn’t have to be this way. How is it that the national Enterprise operator didn’t know the local office didn’t have cars available? Finding out would have been a less-than-two-minute exercise. And further, since the ability for them to pick me up was a crucial element in this particular case, the fact that I couldn’t confirm that until the whole reservation process was done made no sense. Enterprise didn’t get my rental and instead have given more fodder for me to talk about on blogs and at keynotes. I don’t think that my requests were at all unusual, yet Enterprise has decided on a certain level of service that doesn’t align with mine. Perhaps it aligns with others, but I have to believe that the better course would be to make your service flexible enough to work in nearly any average situation. How many of your processes or procedures are not suited for the ways that reasonable customers expect? Find them and fix them!