Experience.com Helps Hospitality Companies Drive Real-Time Behavioral Improvement

The Opportunity

Here is a story of a company that dove into the deep end of the pool and fully immersed themselves into the CX 2.0 waters.
AEZ recognized the need to improve their online reputation and customer loyalty by creating a better customer experience from the online booking experience, to the agent’s interaction at the counter, and the conclusion of the car experience.
Advantage had been using a more traditional Net Promoter Scoring® (NPS®) Model for years. They surveyed their customers and were receiving a fairly average 2% response rate. But NPS reports mostly echo what you already know about the business and are already focused on resolving. Therefore, they will have little to no positive impact on the business.

This was the place their data started, costing Advantage millions of dollars annually: 

• -25 NPS® Score
• 2% Completion Rate
• 1.8 Avg. Google Star Rating for +/- 70 locations
• 25K +/- Reviews per year
• 47% Good Customer Contact Data 

The Approach

After Advantage Rent A Car merged with E-Z Rent A Car in 2016, Experience.com (formerly SocialSurvey) won the RFP process among other companies because our solution looked decidedly different. 
When SocialSurvey entered into the conversation, we wanted to empower Advantage’s happy customers to provide reviews. They weren’t managing their online reputation, so their unhappy customers were doing it for them.
We strongly feel that a CX 2.0 strategy is never about hiding the problem by getting some happy people to write Google reviews. It is always about helping great companies, who care deeply about their customers and employees, create amazing customer experiences. And the Chief Marketing Officer at Advantage agreed to give CX 2.0 a try.

The Results

Improved Employee Behavior
By utilizing SocialSurvey’s employee integrated survey model and soliciting for customer generated content that measures performance at the individual agent level, AEZ was able to identify the employees who best reflected their values and influence the others to follow their lead.
SocialSurvey’s unique model allows real-time feedback, recognition, compensation and accountability for each rental agent. This created nearly instant improvement in agent reviews, increasing the average to 4.32 stars.
Better & More Data
More accurate collection of email addresses allowing delivery of more surveys and contact information for marketing promotions. Deliverable email addresses increased from 47% to 89% in just over a year.
Driving behavior at the agent level results in an engaged employee, 4X response rates and 2X better customer data. This has created more than 200,000 reviews and counting, 8x more than before within 6 months alone.
Improved Customer Behavior
Gateway Question – The number of customers self-reporting a “Great” overall experience during vehicle pick up increased from 42% to 67%.
Online Reputation
All 57 branches that had an existing Google Local rating experienced an increase. Average improvement went from 1.96 to 3.37 stars.
Driving rental agent behavior results in a far greater customer experience, which led to customers creating nearly 10,000 positive Google reviews to boost every location and increasing the location averages by about 1.5 stars.

Two years after going all in and deploying a customized CX 2.0 model with Experience.com, here’s where AEZ improved: 

• 51.5+ Improvement in NPS® Score
• 5x Improvement in Completion Rate
• 1.9 Star Improvement in Avg. Google Star Rating (across all locations)
• 10x Growth in Total Reviews Collected Annually
• 2x Improvement in Customer Contact Data 
• And their numbers will only continue to improve.

To say the results of this plan are incredible would be an understatement. Advantage Rent A Car embraced CX 2.0 and turned their employees into their ambassadors and customers into their #1 marketing asset online. They have better data, more loyal customers and happier employees.