[NatResGirl]

So I forgot about this forum for a while... I'll consolidate all my replies into one post.

NatRes girl: Your department gets so much crap, yet NatRes has been growing at a faster rate than daily rental branches over the past couple of years, hasn't it?

I'm not high enough on the food chain to know those numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me. Group 76 does pretty well for itself. We're not considered a profit-making area of the company; we make enough to operate, pay employees, have fun stuff every now and then, and remodel the building. We're running right about where we should be, from what I can tell, as far as the number of agents on the phones when compared with the number of calls we get (as opposed to this time last year--craziness). To go back to what you said, though, (and I'm not a business person, so don't take my word as gospel), we can't grow at a faster rate than the rest of the company unless we were behind to begin with. Which we might have been last year. But if we're growing at a faster rate, we're going to end up with too many agents on the phone to handle the call volume, and we'll lose money because a bunch of people will just be sitting there waiting for calls to come in, but still be getting paid. The whole company has to do well in order for our call volume to grow, and we'll grow in relation to that call volume.

I do think that we, as a group, are run much more efficiently than the rest of the company, which is probably why I get so pissed off about the lack of communication between other parts of the company, including between us and branches and vice-versa. I'm probably just spoiled.

we don't hate you guys. but why is that most your peeps don't seem to pronounce the letters L, S, R and V's? i don't know when "fie o'clock is" in fact when you do call i still have no idea what you want because 90% of the idiots i get with natres are hood rats still speaking with ghetto slang.

You have to remember you're talking to people who live in St. Louis. Some areas of St. Louis have an ebonic vernacular. On the other hand, no one at NatRes is making fun of the way you speak--unless you're from Brooklyn...

I work at NatRes, I have never worke at a place that if you had to call a branch, AAA, Car MFG, even the help desk it was held against you. All of those calls reflect on your Monthly numbers. Then you end up having to give up your 2 fifteen minute breaks the rest of the month to compensate for it. Heaven help your numbers if you get anything on surveys below a 5, it will take your ESQI into the dump for the month.

That happens. If you go in with an attitude like that, though, it's going to happen over and over again, and you'll be let go. People with your attitude make it worse for everyone else. It's all quite do-able if you actually do your job , otherwise there would not be people at NatRes who've worked there for years.

All of those numbers we have to meet are ridiculous! I've never worked at a place where doing your job correctly counts against you. My favorite thing to do now is release calls instead of calling helpdesk or AAA.

That is NOT doing your job correctly. Oh. My. Gosh. Seriously, disconnecting instead of transferring someone to AAA? Would you like to be on the other end of that call? People like you are the reason why *I* get angry customers who call back hollering and crying about "I just spoke to _____ and she was VERY rude to me and hung up on me" and that just ruins my whole day. Have a look at the big picture, will you? They're not stupid, they WILL call back. As for disconnecting instead of calling helpdesk, DON'T CALL HELP DESK. I call help desk maybe once a week, if even. You CAN handle 90% of those calls where your initial impulse is to pass the buck. You just don't want to. Do your job or get another one. Don't make it worse for the rest of us.

Natresgirl....How does your ESQI survey work???

Approximately 20% of callers are offered a survey before they get an agent. And, from what I've gathered from people higher up, maybe 20% of those actually accept. Then they get the call. Then immediately after they're finished with the call, the agent hangs up, and the customer gets the survey, which goes something like this: "Thank you for taking our survey. Based on the service you just received, please rate your level of satisfaction, 5 meaning completely satisfied, 1 meaning not at all satisfied." Then they press a number. Then the survey asks them to confirm their selection. Then the survey asks them if they would like to leave a comment. Then they're done. It takes about 60 seconds.

What I do NOT like about the ESQi survey is customers get the survey whether or not they make a reservation. They could be someone calling who doesn't have a credit card, who wants a FVAR, and who is 18 years old, and so nothing I have to say will be remotely positive--but I still have to try and put a positive spin on it and leave them feeling "satisfied" when I hang up, or else they'll press 1, and then they'll leave a comment like "You people should start renting to younger people! That's age discrimination!" (only sometimes it's much more colorful...). And so it's obvious that nothing I did made them unsatisfied. It's company policy, period. I am NEVER mean to people. I NEVER hang up on people unless they are absolutely flying off the handle and will not calm down, and even then I tell them to call back later when they've calmed down. I NEVER do anything which, in my mind, is deserving of less than a 5. Yet the tone of my voice could sound too harsh to a customer, or they could just be having a bad day and I wouldn't play mommy and make them feel better, or an entire city was sold out (group 06 lately, anyone?), and so they give me a 3 and ruin my month. Anything less than a 5 does not count. And you're judged by percentage--if I get 10 surveys the whole month and the breakdown is 7 fives and 3 fours, I'm at 70% and I'm in hot water, absolutely regardless of the fact that the 3 "not fives" were 4's.

Given that we are a CALL CENTER, I think we should use the kinds of surveys that you get any other time you're speaking to a call center--AmerenUE, Laclede Gas, T-Mobile, Cingular, etc. You get a survey which takes about 3 minutes, and it asks you several different questions to judge everything about the call. "How would you rate the agent's level of knowledge?" "How would you rate the prices you were given?" etc. At least that way, when a customer is dissatisfied, you don't have to depend on them leaving a comment after the survey (and most don't) to know why they are dissatisfied. And then you can fix the little things instead of playing a guessing game about the whole process. The excuse I've been given in the past is that oh, we've tried other kinds of surveys, and this one gets the most responses since it's shorter. I swear, hasn't Enterprise ever heard of "quality over quantity"? What good does it do to have lots and lots of surveys if they don't TELL you anything? Also, there's the excuse that we have to align with the rest of the company, and the rest of the company uses ESQi. Well, the rest of the company is not a call center. And I've never once seen Group 76's ESQi reported in Free Enterprise or in the montly E-newsletter. Not once. So what does it matter?

But, I've been struggling with this for a year and a half and I'm still here, so it must not be that bad.

I continue to be astonished how NatRes will make reservations for cars at a local branch even without even checking to see if they have any cars. This is such a fundamental, simple concept. Senior management at Enterprise must be completely dysfunctional to allow this to continue. Or maybe it's profit optimization (book, don't look) masquerading as incompetence?

Since this post is already a mile long, allow me to give you a brief overview of what happens during a reservation.

(ring, ring--phone whisper says "Airport Call")
Me: "Thank you for calling Enterprise, this is ____, how may I help you today?"
Customer: "Hi, I need to rent a car."
Me: "Great, I can help you with that. What city would you like to rent in?"
Customer: "Orlando."
Me: "Would you like to rent at the airport or at a local office?"
Customer: "Airport, MCO."
[I type "MCO" in NatRes 2.0 and I get the Orlando airport Enterprise Office.]
Me: "All right, we have an office that services the Orlando airport. When would you like to rent?"
Customer: "December 24th at 10am, returning December 26th at 8am."
[I enter these dates and times.]
Me: "Are you returning to the same location?"
Customer: "Yes."
Me: "Very good. And are all drivers at least 25 with a credit card and a driver's license?"
Customer: "Yes, yes, yes, all of that."
Me: "Sorry for the Spanish Inquisition there. Would you like a midsize car similar to a Dodge Stratus, or maybe a full size car similar to a Ford Taurus?"
Customer: "No, I have three kids who behave like animals when they're sitting two inches from each other. I need a minivan."
[I scroll over and note that the minivans are sold out. Which means SOMEONE, at SOME point, has CALLED NATRES to say "Hey, we're out of minivans on these days around Christmas, we need you to sell out on those." BECAUSE someone did that, I see only that Orlando *carries* minivans, and below the car class it says "Sold Out," and the button to select that car class says "Not Avail"--I see no prices or mileage, only that they are sold out, and it is impossible to select that vehicle to reserve it.]
Me: "Oh, I'm so sorry, but it looks like the airport is sold out of minivans on the dates you have requested. I do have an SUV available, which is similar in size to a Trailblazer. It seats only five passengers, but still, it might have a little more room in the backseat for your animals... I mean children."
Customer: "Well... no, I really wanted a minivan. I guess I'll call back later if I want that SUV."
Me: "I'm sorry we didn't have what you were looking for this time. Call us again soon, and have a great day."

So there you go. If an office is SOLD OUT of something, someone--I don't care who, but someone from that office, or their boss, or their boss's boss, or their boss's boss's boss's boss's boss--needs to call and SAY SO. If they do, then it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to book whatever they've said they're sold out on. Like I've said before, there are thousands and thousands of Enterprise locations. One little call center handles all the groups in the US and Canada, as well as airport locations in the UK. We CANNOT be expected to play mind games with all of those offices. The best way of operating is we make reservations if we see that it is possible to select that car class. We handle hundreds and hundreds of thousands of calls a month. That's why we have NatRes 2.0, and before that we had RALPH. It's a system where we read right off the screen: car size, availability, prices. If an office does not want reservations to be made, SOMEONE has to call us to let us know, and then what we'll see on our screen is car size, SOLD OUT, NO PRICES. And EVERY GROUP knows this. If we see it, we're going to book it. If no one has called, someone higher-up obviously wants us to book what we see. And it's unfortunate for the employees and for the customers if that "someone" higher-up decides to leave an office showing open availability at NatRes when it is SO not the case.

Bottom line, we do what we're told. When we're told not to do something, it literally becomes impossible to do it. The system works. It's the people running the system who cause problems. Not to mention some of my admittedly incompetent co-workers who move beyond reading what's on the screen and start promising things that just aren't there. But those people aren't around for long.

Questions, anyone?