Enterprise Case Study

1. Enterprise’s strategy for the car rental industry in the mid 1990’s focused on customer service and satisfaction. They spent over 2 years and $10 million dollars researching what their customers wanted and valued in a car rental company. Research showed that 70% of customers who were completely satisfied with their Enterprise experience would rent from them again. Customers only satisfied were only 22% likely to rent from them again. Thus began the strategy of ensuring as many customers were completely satisfied in order to gain loyal customers who would bring in repeat business. Customers cared about clean cars, speedy transactions, and employees who have a good attitude and willingness to help them. Enterprise’s strategy was to improve the number of completely satisfied customers they developed a metric called the Enterprise Service quality Index (ESQi) which was based on a customer survey it gave to customers based on the simple question of how satisfied they were with their overall Enterprise experience.

Enterprise had already been a company that gave employees generous financial incentives to help further the company’s larger long term goals and this was no exception. After two years there was no increase in customer satisfaction based on the results coming in. Management responded by asking how they could get employees motivated to improve these numbers. Enterprise aligned their goal of increasing customer satisfaction with the individual aspirations of employees at the company. Management decided that only managers with positive survey results above the company’s average were eligible for corporate recognition and highly coveted awards. Furthermore no employees in a branch whose results were below the company average were eligible to be promoted. This not only prompted an increase in individual performance but also the teamwork of branches as well. Within a decade completely satisfied customers went from 67% to over 80% with the gap between...