Grab your customers before its too late!

The markets are shrinking. Businesses have only one way to survive - they must build customer loyalty to earn repeat business. The easiest way to build loyalty with customers is to increase their pleasure when conducting business with you. This is known as 'Customer Satisfaction' and must be obtained in order to run a successful business.

"The gulf between

satisfied customers and

completely satisfied

customers can swallow

a business."

- Harvard Business Review

This was a quote from the Harvard Business Review in 1995. This information was found off the website of a customer service measuring website. The company name is Quality Digest. They act as a 3rd party for businesses by calling customers and asking about the service they received at their last visit. The information is gathered and a report is sent to the company. A company can use the data collected by Quality Digest to increase their service in areas that are lacking, and continue to excel in areas that are pleasing customers.

There are several trends that occur with many companies that use this service. Let me set the stage with an example: "Company A" newly hired Quality Digest do perform customer service phone calls so they can learn how customers viewed the service they received. After the first month, Quality Digest sends the report to the owner of the business. The scores are "completely satisfied" is a few categories, "somewhat satisfied" in a few categories, and "dissatisfied" in one category.

Now besides that one "dissatisfied" category, that is not a bad rating - everybody was satisfied in one way or another by the service. Company A puts forward an initiative to increase the score from the "dissatisfied" category to a score more acceptable. The next month, another report is delivered to the owner of Company A. This month, the company was able to increase that score to "Completely Satisfied". However, it seemed that the efforts put forth to increase that score caused the employees to sacrifice time and focus in the other categories, which caused those scores to fall drastically.

The lesson here is to correct what needs to be fixed, but pay close attention to your other areas of focus as well. Just because you GOT a high customer service score before does not mean that it will happen again with less work. Remember how hard you worked to get that score, and that is how hard you must work in order to keep that score.

This is a very interesting website and company. Their site offers statistics about customer service and the benefits it can have for your customers:

"A 5% increase in loyalty can increase profits by 25%-85%"

When you get a job, think about these facts and how strong customer service can help grow a company. Good service goes farther than you could imagine!

http://www.qualitydigest.com/sept00/html/satisfaction.html

Enterprise. National. Alamo?

Enterprise Holdings is a privately owned company which owns and operates Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Several years ago, they acquired National and Alamo car rentals. I saw an ad on Youtube for Enterprise talking about the merger with the companies. I thought it was odd however that the ad was only for Enterprise and National. Why would they not include Alamo car rentals in the ad?


I asked my boss at work after I saw the ad. Apparently, Enterprise and National are known as the rental car companies for insurance replacements and corporate renters. Alamo is known for its airport locations and typically rents to people on vacations. Do you think this advertising strategy is a good idea? What harm could be done if Alamo would be to added to the ad? Wouldn't it just help the companies to be affiliated with each other, especially if they had a positive experience?

Do your research

It was March of 2011 when I interviewed with Enterprise Rent-A-Car for my internship as a Management Trainee Intern. I spent many hours looking through their website in an effort to learn as much about the company as possible to gain information to use during my interview. After many hours of website surfing, I decided to Google search the people I had contacted and my interviewer from HR. As I scrolled down the page, I found Facebook pages, Linkedin pages, and pages that related them to Enterprise. About half way down the page was a link from internships.com. I opened the link and began to read the article. It was an interview which included 5 questions about the application process of interns like myself. I memorized the questions and answers on the website and used them at every opportunity I could during the course of my interview. I don't want to put my success on the website, but I did get the job.

In conclusion, I highly recommend you Google search the company and interviewers you are going to be in contact with. You never know what you are going to find.

Here is the article I found that assisted me in my application process:
http://www.internships.com/eyeoftheintern/applying-2/employers-applying-2/5-5-enterprise-rentacar/