Rental Car Customer Service and The Remarkable Leader

Diane Brady, in a recent Business Week blog post commented on a Customer Service horror story. She recounts how on trying to return a rental car 10 hours early, they (Avis) attempt to charge her an almost 50% premium on her rates!

While she did negotiate those rates back down, it leaves me thinking about what I would do if I was the leader at Avis and at the counter at that location. Maybe more to the point,

What would a remarkable leader do?

Before we answer that question, read the post for yourself.

There are issues at at least three levels here:

Policy level
Empowerment level
Customer Mindset level

These levels are intermingled, but let me unpack a couple of thoughts for you.

Perhaps there is a policy in place to handle these situations (however inane it sounds). If so, a Remarkable, proactive leader would be working to change, abolish or remove this policy. Yes, even if that leader is the night counter manager in Newark - a policy that makes no sense and is detrimental to customers requires change!

Since in this case, the charges were changed, it is clear that even if it was a policy, the person at the desk had the ability to use their judgement and change it. This is an empowerment issue. While Diane had to wait too long and work too hard to make this happen, some "justice" was done. As a remarkable leader it is your job to empower people to make those decisions, based on organizational goals and values. As importantly, to make those decisions quickly when working with Customers, which leads to the third level . . .

Remarkable leaders set the pace in creating a mindset that is focused on Customers and meeting/exceeding their needs. If leadership had created the right mindset, Diane wouldn't have had a blog post to write, and neither would I. What is the mindset in your organization in relationship to Customers. Is the end of Diane's story ("hey, she got the rate changed") good enough?

All of us have these Customer service horror stories. The question is, as a leader what are you learning from them?

Labels: customer mindset, empowerment, Remarkable Leadership