Today’s consumers have a vast number of choices, especially in an industry like car rentals. With competition from other car rental companies and emerging peer-to-peer businesses, it’s exemplary customer experience that will serve as the true differentiator.
That’s why, at National Car Rental, we approach customer experience improvements and innovations as an ongoing collaboration with customers. Since 2010, we’ve partnered with leading consumer collaboration agency Communispace to build the Emerald Exchange, a private, online community of 300 of National Emerald Club members. They’re our trusted eyes and ears on the ground, influencing strategic business decisions and inspiring innovations that create a better experience for every National customer.
National’s core customer is the frequent business traveler. Considering how busy these customers are, you might think that they’d never be willing to spend time sharing opinions and providing feedback to a rental car company. But you’d be wrong. They’re deeply engaged with us, and, precisely because they travel so often, have a vested interest in co-creating an amazing experience.
Through photos, videos, and narratives about what they’ve experienced at National locations and with competitors, the community gives us a clear view into their emotions, frustrations, and what they really want. In turn, this insight allows us to design programs and services that transcend their needs. Like refining National’s Emerald Aisle program, where customers can skip the line at the counter, head straight to the lot to select their vehicle, and quickly be on their way.
Conversation — and collaboration — with our customers is always going on. Whether we’re putting topics in front of the community or they are introducing their own topics for discussion, a 24/7/365 dialogue with customers enables us, in real-time, to innovate in ways we never imagined.
To co-create our National mobile app, we partnered with the community for months, gathering incremental feedback and prioritizing functionality that made the app much more than just a car reservation tool. The final product was an end-to-end “rental tracker” that follows the complete life cycle of a customer’s rental, including directions, inventory selection, rewards, roadside assistance, and more.
At National, analytics and insights work hand-in-hand. While we always strive to make actionable data-driven decisions, analytics alone won’t give us the complete picture of what our customers are experiencing. Open, honest, ongoing customer interaction reveals the whys behind the whats — the motivations behind the metrics — and yields important insight into what works, what doesn’t, and how we can create an experience that surpasses our customers’ expectations.
This approach is working. Since launching the community in 2010, we’ve seen a 27% increase in active Emerald Club loyalty program membership and an increase in company revenue. It’s also earned us industry praise and accolades (including a CXPA 2014 CX Innovation Award).
Today, it’s common for National senior executives to ask, “Did we put this in front of the community for their thoughts and ideas?” And before we launch any new program or service, we share and review the concepts with our community to get their input. But the best thing that’s happened is what we’ve learned — and continue to learn — from engaging with our customers to build an amazing experience.