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emia COMPANY Case Enterprise Rent-A-Car: Measuring Service Quality SURVEYING CUSTOMERS Kevin Kirkman wheeled his shiny blue BMW coupe into his drive- way, put the gearshift into park, set the parking brake, and got out to check his mailbox as he did every day when he returned home. As he flipped through the deluge of catalogs and credit card offers, he noticed a letter from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. He wondered why Enterprise would be writing him THE WRECK Then he remembered. Earlier that month, Kevin had been involved in a wreck. As he was driving to work one rainy morning, another car had been unable to stop on the slick pavement and had plowed into his car as he waited at a stoplight. Thankfully, neither he nor the other driver was hurt, but both cars had sustained con- siderable damage. In fact, he was not able to drive his car. Kevin had used his cell phone to call the police, and while he was waiting for the officers to come, he had called his auto insurance agent. The agent had assured Kevin that his policy included cover- age to pay for a rental car while he was having his car repaired. He told Kevin to have the car towed to a nearby auto repair shop and gave him the telephone number for the Enterprise Rent-A-Car office that served his area. The agent noted that his company recom- mended using Enterprise for replacement rentals and that Kevin's policy would cover up to $20 per day of the rental fee. Once Kevin had checked his car in at the body shop and made the necessary arrangements, he telephoned the Enterprise office. Within 10 minutes, an Enterprise employee had driven to the repair shop and picked him up. They drove back to the Enterprise office, where Kevin completed the paperwork and rented a Ford Taurus. He drove the rental car for 12 days before the repair shop completed work on his car. “Don't know why Enterprise would be writing me," Kevin thought. "The insurance company paid the $20 per day, and | paid the extra because the Taurus cost more than that. Wonder what the problem could be?” TRACKING SATISFACTION Kevin tossed the mail on the passenger's seat and drove up the driveway. Once inside his house, he opened the Enterprise letter to find that it was a survey to determine how satisfied he was with his rental. The survey itself was only one page long and con- sisted of 13 questions (see Exhibit 1). Enterprise's executives believed that the company had become the largest rent-a-car company in the United States (in terms of number of cars, rental locations, and revenue) because of its laserlixe focus on customer satisfaction and because of its con- centration on serving the home-city replacement market. It aimed to serve customers like Kevin who were involved in wrecks and suddenly found themselves without a car. While the more well- known companies like Hertz and Avis battled for business in the cutthroat airport market, Enterprise quietly built its business by cultivating insurance agents and body-shop managers as referral agents so that when one of their clients or customers needed a replacement vehicle, they would recommend Enterprise. Although such replacement rentals accounted for about 80 per- cent of the company’s business, it also served the discretionary ne market (leisure/vacation rentals), and the business market (renting cars to businesses for their short-term needs). {t had also begun to provide on-site and off-site service at some airports. Throughout its history, Enterprise had followed founder Jack Taylor’s advice. Taylor believed that if the company took care of its customers and employees first, profits would follow. So the com- pany was careful to track customer satisfaction. About 1 in 20 randomly selected customers received a letter like Kevin's. An independent company mailed the letter and a postage-paid return envelope to the selected customers. Customers who completed the survey used the envelope to return it to the independent company, That company compiled the results and provided them to Enterprise. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT Meanwhile, back at Enterprise's St. Louis headquarters, the com- pany’s top managers were interested in taking the next steps in their customer satisfaction program. Enterprise had used the per- centage of customers who were completely satisfied to develop its Enterprise Service Quality index (ESQi). It used the survey results to calculate an overall average ESQi score for the company and a score for each individual branch. The company’s branch managers believed in and supported the process. However, top management believed that to really “walk the walk” on customer satisfaction, it needed to make the ESQi a key factor in the promotion process. The company wanted to take the ESQi for the branch or branches a manager supervised into con- sideration when it evaluated that manager for a promotion. Top management believed that such a process would ensure that its managers and all its employees would focus on satisfying Enterprise’s customers. However, the top managers realized they had two problems in taking the next step. First, they wanted a better survey response rate. Although the company got a 25 percent response rate, which was good for this type of survey, it was concerned that it might still be missing important information. Second, it could take up to two months to get results back, and Enterprise believed it needed a process that would get the customer satis- faction information more quickly, at least on a monthly basis, so its branch managers could identify and take action on custamer service problems quickly and efficiently. Enterprise's managers wondered how they could improve the customer-satisfaction-tracking process. “an hes j > na 
