Hertz is one of the world’s leading rental car brands and the second largest in the United States measured by sales, fleet size and locations. It is also the largest worldwide in terms of airport locations with over 2,900 locations internationally. Top notch customer service is imperative to creating repeat customers, and the @Hertz Twitter handle has almost 60K followers. Hertz uses this as a joint marketing/customer service site.
https://twitter.com/Hertz?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Comparing Hertz’s customer service to its main competitors, @EnterpriseCares and @Avis, was done by using several metrics. Average Response Time, First Response Time, Weekly Mentions, Response Rate and percentage of responses under 30 minutes. The study was conducted from March 1-May 31, 2017.
The first metric, Average Response Time, was a big win for Hertz. On average, they maintained a quick 16 minute response time on Twitter. Enterprise clocked in at 2 hours four minutes and Avis far behind at 3 hours 45 minutes. This response time place them in the upper echelon of all brands. The second metric, first response time, also saw Hertz come out on top. They were the fastest of the three brands with an average time of 21 minutes. Ultimately their goal is to reduce the first response time to under 15 minutes.
The next two categories, weekly mentions and response rate also saw Hertz dominate their competition. Their weekly mention average of 15,131 far outpaced @Avis (9,410) and @EnterpriseCares (3,785). In conjunction with that they responded publically to 8,776 of those mentions for a 58% response rate, also tops amongst the three companies. Finally 90% of those responses were under 30 minutes.
Laura Smith, Vice President for Customer Success at Hertz says: “At Hertz there is a really good understanding of Social Media and the importance it plays.” She goes on to say “We really believe that it’s our role to meet the customer at whatever point in their journey they choose and through whichever channel they choose.” Social media now represents over 10% of the total customer service volume at Hertz. Smith adds: “It’s fast, responsive and interactive”.
Lessons for Others
Hertz truly believes in the future of social media as it relates to customer service. Their return on investment scenario is that they believe it creates a deepening engagement with their customer. It creates a better experience, it is cheaper for them than a traditional phone center and they can handle more requests and throughput as well.
Organization:
Hertz
Industry:
Car Rental Service
Name of Organization Contact:
Laura Smith, Vice President for Customer Success
Authored by: J Pritchard
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