Enterprise Rent a Car and Customer Satisfaction.
Enterprise Rent a Car 1 in 4 dissatisfied customers are more likely to change suppliers than complain in fact less than 5% complain . So following founder Jack Taylors advice, “take care of your customers and staff and profits will follow”, Enterprise is a responsive company that takes direct measures of customer satisfaction by conducting regular surveys. The survey is sent by mail to randomly selected customers, a return envelope is included. The information being gathered in this survey is primarily relating to customer satisfaction, staff and service efficiency, future use and an approx. enterprise/competitors usage ratio. The methodology used is quantitative (shallow but wide), less in-depth information is required but there is wide geographic participation. The research objectives are to assess the quality/efficiency of the service as perceived by the customer, the efficiency of the service staff, condition and availability of stock to meet customer requirements. Enterprise are also trying to identify growing market segments, having built their business on replacement rentals (which accounts for 80% of trade), it is now expanding into other areas such as on site rental at airports. One of the main objectives is to maintain a high standard of service, Enterprise have a strong focus on continuous improvement, and uses the ESQi (Enterprise Service Quality index, which is calculated from the survey results of completely satisfied customers to set the benchmark for quality of service) to assess performance for the company and individual branch’s. The researchers are also trying to get a relative approximation of consumer awareness of the Enterprise brand by assessing usage of the service in relation to competitors over the last year (Q.12 & 13). This information when correlated with information from Q.10 For what reason did you rent this car? can indicate the level of consumer awareness outside the replacement rental sector. Question 2.Once the research problems and objectives have
been defined, researchers must determine the exact information needed , in this case the information required is very specific to the Enterprise quality of service so there is not much scope for using secondary data, therefore primary data must be collected. In primary data collection, you collect the data yourself using methods such as interviews and questionnaires. The key point here is that the data you collect is unique to you and your research and, until you publish, no one else has access to it .There are 3 main approaches to gathering primary data, observation, surveys and experiments. Enterprise is ...
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been defined, researchers must determine the exact information needed , in this case the information required is very specific to the Enterprise quality of service so there is not much scope for using secondary data, therefore primary data must be collected. In primary data collection, you collect the data yourself using methods such as interviews and questionnaires. The key point here is that the data you collect is unique to you and your research and, until you publish, no one else has access to it .There are 3 main approaches to gathering primary data, observation, surveys and experiments. Enterprise is using survey research, the most widely used method for collecting primary data. This method of research is used to collect participant responses on facts, opinions, and attitudes through questionnaires . A company that wants to know about people’s knowledge, attitudes, preferences or buying behaviour can often find out by asking them directly. Flexibility is an major advantage of survey research but, like everything this method has its drawbacks, timescale being one of them, because of the lapse of time between the point of purchase and the survey being completed (in Eric’s case this was nearly a month) people can sometimes forget the details of the transaction (unless of course it was unsatisfactory), which can lead to inaccurate data or non-response. People are also becoming increasingly busier, with little time for filling out surveys, unless it is something that they feel strongly about. We as a group feel that the media the questionnaire is presented in is a fast becoming a major factor in people’s willingness to respond, each of us agreed that we would fill out an on-line/electronic survey quicker than we would fill out a pen and paper one. The contact method use by Enterprise in this case is by mailing the questionnaires. Mail surveys are a cost effective method of gathering information. They are ideal for large sample sizes, or when the sample comes from a wide geographic area. They cost a little less than telephone interviews, however, they take over twice as long to complete (eight to twelve weeks). Because there is no interviewer, there is no possibility of interviewer bias. The main disadvantage is the inability to probe respondents for more detailed information. Marketing researchers usually draw conclusions about large groups of consumers by studying a small sample of the total consumer population . When designing a sampling plan there are 3 main factors to be considerer, Who, How Many and How? Enterprise want to gather specific data in relation to the efficiency and quality of their organisation so, in this case the Who should be surveyed is quite obvious, the end users of the service. Anybody can crash, breakdown and go on holiday and require the use of a rental car, given the broad demographic, geographic etc make up of Enterprises customer base, to get an accurate measure of customer satisfaction across each demographic section could be expensive and messy, how many people would eventually make up the final sample?. The practice of randomly selecting 1 in every 20 customers is much simpler, it helps ensure that those reached by the survey are a valid cross section of the sampling unit and it also allows Enterprise to consistently send surveys to 5% of it’s customers with out constantly readjusting for sales fluctuations. In collecting primary data, marketing researchers have a choice of two main research instruments—the questionnaire and mechanical devices. The questionnaire is by far the most common instrument. A questionnaire consists of a set of questions presented to a respondent for his or her answers. In preparing a questionnaire, the marketing researcher must decide what questions to ask, the form of the questions, the wording of the questions, and the ordering of the questions. Each question should be checked to see that it contributes to the research objectives . We believe that Enterprise use questionnaires as they are the most practical and if not the most cost effective method available to them at the moment. Although it does state on the Enterprise-rent-a car website that they also regularly use phone surveys to assess customer satisfaction Question 3.There are several alternatives to mail surveys that we would suggest, telephone surveys being one of them, but as stated above this is a method that Enterprise already employs. Telephone surveys are good for gathering data quickly, unclear questions can be explained, skipped or explored more deeply depending on the respondents answers, there is a higher response rate than mail surveys and being able to add a personal touch (first name etc) can be beneficial to the interviewer. They could also use Internal databases where sales and cost data can be used by the accounting dept. for preparing financial statement can be adapted for use in evaluation the value of specific customer segment, sales force or channel performance .Information could also be gathered from recruits and competitors employees, many unsatisfied customers will relate their experiences to the supplier that they have moved on to, quicker than they will complain to the supplier they are leaving. Ghost/mystery shoppers are an excellent way to gather first hand reliable data on employee performance, especially in a company like Enterprise which is highly customer orientated, where employee performance is directly related to customer satisfaction. Ghost shoppers present specific problems in order to test whether the company’s personnel handle difficult situations well .Another alternative is web based market research. As web based online marketing research has evolved, online studies are often the premier data collection methodology for new products research, brand name research, branding studies, concept testing, product development research, pricing research, and customer satisfaction research .Question 4. In this era where technology is king, we were a little amazed that Enterprise is not conducting surveys by e-mail. We feel using this method would immediately increase the response rate and speed of return. Almost every form you fill in these days has a blank for your e-mail address, as almost everyone has an e-mail account, Enterprise should be ulitising this. Many people, ourselves included consider postal surveys to be junk mail and bin them without even reading them. Whereas 3 of our group have completed several online surveys, convenience being the main reason for this. There is moderate or high involvement by the target population when surveyed on line . E-mail can be sent daily if wished, and many people will respond then and there, dramatically increasing the speed of return. This method would also be cost effective in terms of postage, paper and envelopes, not to mention the labour hours saved on data input from the pen and paper surveys.If Enterprise wants to continue with their current system there are improvements that they can make to increase response and speed of return. Entering all respondents into a competition with a dead line, giving them an incentive, a possible return on their time, would encourage participation and a speedy response. A way of improving response rates to mail surveys is to mail a postcard telling your sample to watch for a questionnaire in the next week or two. Another is to follow up a questionnaire mailing after a couple of weeks with a card asking people to return the questionnaire. The downside is that this doubles or triples your mailing cost Offices could also have a small dedicated area with questionnaires, pens and a drop box. The office staff could request customers to complete the questionnaires on return of the hire car. The dedicated area and more importantly the drop box allow for the respondent to complete the survey privately and honestly. They could leave a smaller more condensed questionnaire in each car (with a pen of course) with a small note asking customers to fill it out whilst stuck in traffic or at lights, this could then be collected when the car is returned to the office. We also feel that they could redesign the questionnaire itself, the layout is cluttered; it looks confusing at first glance. The first rule to designing a questionnaire is KISS keep it short and simple. They could possibly shorten it by halving it and creating two surveys sent to 50:50 ratio of respondents.