Avis Tries Harder to Maintain a Great Reputation
I often consider Trackur’s own unoffical motto to be “We try harder.” We’re the Avis of social media monitoring.
And, today, I am glad to report that Avis continues to try harder to keep its customers happy. Consider this case study…
A couple of weeks ago, we rented a car from Avis while staying in San Diego. It was a quick trip, and at $160+ for a two day rental, there were cheaper options than Avis. However, my wife and I have had great experiences with the cleanliness of Avis’ cars, so we considered it worth the extra expense.
So, you can imagine the horror we faced when discovering on the morning of the second day that our car was infested with ants. I mean, these suckers were coming out of the glove box, the vents, even the center console. Of course, we could return the car, but we had precious little time during our trip, so decided to just suck it up and let Avis know about it upon return of the car.
OK, so here’s where Avis excelled.
The Rental Agent Cared!
When returning the car, the rental agent apologized for the ants. He said that if it ever happened again to just call them and they would bring out a different car to our location. No need for us to return to the airport!
He also deducted a small amount from our total, as a token of apology.
Someone Reads Avis’ Surveys!
A few days after our return, I received one of those automated surveys asking for our feedback. Normally I ignore them, but I thought “why not?” I completed the survey, and for the most part gave Avis 8 or 9s out of 10. With the exception of the cleanliness of the car–which received a very generous 2. There was a place to explain my rating, so I typed “Our car was infested with ants.”
Well knock me over with a feather, someone at Avis actually read the comments. Not only read them, but acted on them by sending me this personal email:
Avis Apologizes Again!
OK, at this point I’m happy. Avis did exactly–perhaps more–than what I would expect from a rental car company. Now, consider that I hadn’t made a big fuss on Twitter, didn’t write a scathing blog post. No, this all happened pretty much offline, so it’s not like I was making public problems with Avis’ reputation. Still, today I received another email from Avis. While it’s a little more pre-formatted, it goes above and beyond what I would expect from a car rental company.
So, to recap this, and format it into a take away you can use: Make sure that every touch point with your customer includes a means to respond to complaints. Empower everyone in your company to fix a bad situation and never let negative feedback fester in the mind of an unhappy customer.
As for us, we’ll continue to follow Avis’ lead and be the social media monitoring tool that tries harder!
