Alamo and Enterprise Lead Rental Cars in Customer Experience

We recently released the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 293 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Here are some highlights from the rental car industry:

• Although down from its peak of 61% in 2012, rental car agencies saw a slight increase in their average experience ratings, from 59.3% in 2014 to 60.0% in 2015.
• Alamo claimed the top spot and continued its upward trend. It increased by eight percentage-points between the 2013 and 2014 TxR, and by another nine points between the 2014 and 2015 TxR. Enterprise earned the second spot with a Rating of 67%.
• For its first year on the Ratings, Fox Rent A Car took the bottom spot with a rating of 42%, placing 292nd out of the 293 companies we evaluated.
• Rental car companies made up three of the bottom twenty companies: Fox Rent A Car (42%), Dollar (47%), and Thrifty (50%). Overall, scores in this industry ranged from “very poor” to just “okay.” And the industry tied for 15th place out of 20 industries with an average rating of 60%.
• Rental car agencies also increased their average rating in both the success and the effort component. Their success average increased from 62% to 63% and their effort average increased for 63% to 64%. The industry’s emotion average stayed steady at 53%.
• Alamo, Enterprise, and National were the only companies to score above the industry averages in all three TxR component categories. Alamo recorded the highest scores for success with 74% (11 points above the industry average) and emotion with 61% (eight points above the industry average), while Enterprise scored highest for effort with 72% (eight points above the industry average).

Advantage and Enterprise Lead Rental Car Industry in 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings

We recently released the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 268 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Advantage and Enterprise earned a 64% rating and tied for 144^th place overall out of 268 companies across 19 industries. This is Advantage’s second year in a row in the top spot, whereas Enterprise improved its ranking from second place in 2013 to first place this year. At the other end of the spectrum, for the third year in a row, Dollar received the lowest rating of any of the eight rental car agencies evaluated, landing in 241^st place overall with a rating of 54%.

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Here are some additional findings from the airline industry:

Report: What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014. The report, which includes 19 data charts, examines which companies and industries provide the most bad experiences, what impact those experiences have on spending, and how the negative impacts of bad experiences can be mitigated by good service recovery. The report also examines how consumers share their good and bad experiences with companies as well as with other people. Here’s the executive summary:

To understand the effect of good and bad experiences, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with 268 companies across 19 industries. Results show that Internet services and TV services are the industries most likely to deliver a bad experience to their customers, while grocery chains are the least likely to. At the company level, Scottrade had the smallest percentage of customers reporting a recent bad experience with the company and Time Warner Cable had the highest. More than half of the customers who encountered a bad experience at a fast food chain, credit card issuer, grocery store, or hotel either decreased their spending with the company or stopped altogether. However, our data shows that a good service recovery effort can help mitigate a bad experience. Unfortunately, many firms—especially in the banking, Internet services, and TV services sectors—aren’t very good at service recovery. In addition to the consequences of bad interactions, we also examined which channels customers use to share their good and bad experiences and how these changed across age groups. We then compared these results to survey responses from the past two years. We also uncovered a negative bias inherent in how customers provide feedback. ING Direct, Residence Inn, and Fairfield Inn have the most negative bias in the feedback they receive directly from customers, while Hy-Vee and Hyundai have the most negative bias on Facebook. 

Click link to see full list of industries and companies covered in this report (.pdf).

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One of the most interesting analyses in the report is the look at how service recovery after a bad experience affects the spending pattern of consumers. Here’s a summary of one of the charts showing just how important it is for a company to recover well after making a mistake:

Here are some other insights from the research:

• Sixteen percent of consumers who have interacted with TV service and Internet service providers report having a bad experience over the previous six months. Next on the list are wireless carriers, with 12% of their customers reporting a bad experience. At the other end of the spectrum, only 3% of consumers report a bad experience with grocery chains and 4% report having a bad experience with fast food chains.
• The five companies with the most customers reporting bad experiences are Time Warner Cable (25%), Motel 6 (22%), Coventry Health Care (21%), and Comcast (21%). There were 10 companies with only 1% or less of their customers reporting bad experiences: Scottrade, Chick-fil-A, H.E.B., Whole Foods, ShopRite, ING Direct, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Vanguard, and True Value.
• More than one-quarter of consumers who have a bad experience stop spending with computer makers, car rental agencies, credit card issuers, hotel chains, and software companies. The impact of bad experiences is less costly for parcel delivery services, wireless carriers, health plans, TV service providers, Internet service providers, and grocery chains, as less than 15% of their customers with bad experience stopped spending.
• The industries that are the best at responding to a bad experience are investment firms, major appliances, retailers, and car rental agencies. The industries that are the worst at responding to a bad experience are TV service providers, wireless carriers, Internet service providers, parcel delivery services, and health plans.
• Thirty-two percent of consumers give feedback directly to companies after a very bad experience and 23% give feedback after a very good experience.
• Overall, 25- to 34-year-olds are the most likely to share feedback about their experiences. After a good experience 57% tell a friend directly, 28% share on Facebook, and 18% put a comment or rating on a review site. After a bad experience, 60% tell a friend directly, 31% share on Facebook, and 20% write a review.

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The bottom line: Make sure to recover quickly after a bad experience