In the most recent PwC Customer Loyalty survey, more than half (55 percent) of respondents said they would stop purchasing from a company they liked after just a few bad experiences, with 8 percent saying they would do so after just one bad experience.
Most of us who have rented a car have probably experienced a negative experience at one point – a long line, a confusing contract, or having to complete an excessive amount of paperwork before you’re finally behind the wheel of a midsize sedan.
Eliminating these familiar consumer frustrations and pain points was a key initiative for Avis Budget Group when it set out to modernize customer engagement by creating a seamless, omnichannel experience throughout an individual customer journey – pre-trip to post-trip.
Spurred in part by the huge impact Covid-19 had on customer desires for contactless engagement and digital-first encounters, Avis Budget sought to overhaul the car rental process with a focus on making everything easier for the customer, from searching for and booking a vehicle, to pick-up and return and communicating with the company.
“There was a remarkable shift in customer behaviors where customers were looking for more digital experiences with less human contact,” said Prabhakar Manuel, a Senior Solution Architect with Avis Budget Group.
Creating a Seamless, Omnichannel CX
The surge in popularity of curbside pick-up in retail, Manuel said, inspired the company to mirror that experience across the entire car rental process. To build an end-to-end digitized self-service experience, the company knew it needed two things: a single customer view and the ability to deliver an omnichannel customer experience.
Avis Budget Group selected the Redpoint CDP for its industry-leading Golden Record and journey orchestration capabilities.
“The Redpoint customer data platform is the heart of everything we do. It’s the foundation for how we engage with our customers and for creating omnichannel experiences,” Manuel said.
The Redpoint Golden Record is a single customer view that is updated in real time with data from all customer sources. Using persistent keys, it provides a longitudinal view of a customer over time. Because it contains all customer behaviors, transactions, preferences, personal and device ID’s in a unified profile, Avis Budget Group provides digital-first experiences tuned to individual customer journeys.
Redpoint’s omnichannel orchestration capabilities leverage the Golden Record to deliver next-best actions in the context and cadence of each customer journey, at scale, independent of channel.
A Frictionless Car Rental Process
With the single view of the customer provided by the Golden Record and the ability to intelligently orchestrate an omnichannel customer journey, Avis Budget Group meets customer expectations for a seamless, consistent experience across the pre-trip to post-trip journey whether the customer engages digitally or in-person.
“The Redpoint customer data platform is the heart of everything we do. It’s the foundation for how we engage with our customers and for creating omnichannel experiences.”
– Prabhakar Manuel, Avis Budget Group
For example, through the Golden Record, call center associates have immediate access to a customer’s online browsing session and know how to best serve the customer, delivering a next-best action that is hyper-relevant for the customer in the moment of interaction.
Manuel said that every channel – call center, online booking, drop-off, counter agent, interactive voice recognition (IVR), mobile app – are all working with the same updated customer profile, ensuring a frictionless experience as the rental process unfolds.
“We needed to have that connected, omnichannel framework vs. a multi-channel situation where one channel is not aware of (what’s happening on) another channel,” Manuel said. “And it’s not just that marketers and other business users are aware of everything that a customer is doing, it’s that based on the information available they can activate a personalized experience optimized for each customer.”
As an example, Manuel said that a customer’s flight number will be a data point in the Golden Record. When a flight lands, the customer receives a welcome message (on their preferred channel) with instructions specific to their location for how to pick up their rental car. If the customer has completed a digital check-in with a biometric verification (which includes a fraud check), the customer can bypass the counter. Customer who have completed a digital check-in without that verification save an average of three minutes at the pick-up counter.
Redpoint also supports triggered actions as part of the omnichannel journey orchestration. For example, when a customer who returns a vehicle breaks a geofence, fuel and mileage data are collected and an automated rental closure includes a receipt being sent via email or SMS.
A Closed-Loop Feedback Cycle of Enhanced CX
Manuel said that Avis Budget Group also analyzes customer Golden Records to learn how customers respond to various campaigns; results are then fed back into the CDP to enrich customer profiles, increasing the effectiveness of future campaigns which are now designed and executed in days vs. weeks and months. All because the company has better insight into its customers and uses data to build hyper-relevant experiences for granular segments – corporate or leisure customers, high-value customers, customers with high NPS scores, etc.
Some initial benefits Avis Budget Group has achieved through Redpoint include:
- Increased SMS click-through by 6+ percent for Quickpass campaigns promoting digital check-in
- A 19 percent increase in customer identifications through IVR’s API integration with rg1’s advanced identity resolution capabilities in building a customer Golden Record
- More relevant smart offers, i.e. real time offers in the context of where a customer is in the car rental process (booking, pick-up, drop-off, etc.)
- Opt-in services tuned to customer preferences (SMS weather alerts, SMS car selection, location change alerts, etc.)
- Increased capture of email and opt-in status across multiple customer touchpoints and channels
- Self-service center for customers to access and/or alter their marketing preferences
In a recent McKinsey report on enhancing customer experience in the digital age, 71 percent of consumers surveyed said they expect companies to deliver personalized experiences – and 76 percent said they will switch companies if they don’t like their experience.
Avis Budget Group listened to its customers’ requests for digital-first, personalized experiences that demonstrate an understanding of them as the same customer from one channel to another. With Redpoint, the company is on the road to better experiences, more satisfied customers and the means to profitably differentiate one customer from another.
To watch a Gartner Summit keynote presentation from Prabhakar Manuel and Redpoint Global Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer John Nash, click here.
