National Car Rental

The Challenge

National Car Rental is the leading UK car rental company, operating the largest fleet of commercial and consumer vehicles across its 160 regional branches.

To ensure the company’s 40,000 strong fleet was maintained and serviced to its own, and the vehicle manufacturers’ standards, National Car Rental needed its mileage records regularly updated. Failure to do this effectively would have resulted in the company incurring costly lease penalty fines, and possessing invalid service records, lowering the vehicles’ worth.

To achieve this, each month the company had to employ additional staff to call its customers for an accurate mileage reading. This cost time and money, and inconvenienced their customers, as the calls were often made at a time when they were not behind the wheel to check easily.

National Car Rental therefore looked for a way to streamline and manage the process of communicating with large volumes of its customers more effectively.

The Solution

2ergo enabled National Car Rental to deliver an SMS message to each customer, asking them to text a reply with an accurate mileage reading. This process significantly reduced the number of staff and time needed for updating records, as the system operated automatically and independently – slashing employment costs radically.

2ergo's technology platform was programmed to deliver all National Car Rental’s SMS communication at 9am. Research showed this was the optimum time to contact the customer, as the majority were either in their vehicle, and could stop and send the mileage information or just getting into their car, and could therefore easily reply with the data.

The integration of the new system not only provided a more customer friendly service it also radically decreased the time needed to obtain mileage information.

Customer satisfaction was a key factor for putting the mobile communication service into action, as over 70 percent of people in the UK have stated that they prefer to receive communication via their mobile handset. The new arrangements therefore involved contacting customers in a way which is highly convenient for a great many of them.

The Results

Since the implementation of the 2ergo solution, the company has noticed a significant improvement in keeping its mileage information up to date, reducing lease company penalties by 20 percent.

National Car Rental has radically slashed the amount of time needed for the information update, due to instant SMS communication and customers responding far quicker than previously. The cost of compiling the monthly information report has thus been reduced by up to 30 percent.

Customers perceive the contact to be less intrusive and more convenient, building better relationships.