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| Originally Posted by Surly Pete Part of it is a control issue.
I don't know if this is true or if this is simply what we were told was true, but in my group there were only a few people who were "authorized" to sell out. At the branch manager level, only the airport manager could sell out. And at the ARM level, our group had just one ARM who was the point person. Whenever a branch needed to sell out, they would call their ARM, fight with them over whether it was necessary and if they were lucky enough to convince the ARM, then that ARM would call the "point-person" ARM who would call NatRes and sell out.
Unstandably, this kept the sell out decision out of the hands of the people who might be more inclined to panic when cars were starting to get rented. Unfortunately, it also kept the decision out of the hands of the people who have to deal with customers when there was overbooking issues.
Admin, the problem you describe as a NatRes-to-branch problem exists at the branch level, too. Employees do not have an accurate read on vehicles coming back. Which means it's virtually impossible to book reservations with any real sense of accuracy within a day or two.
I may not be a huge ERAC fan, but I have to suggest that it is not entirely their fault. Ture, part of the problem is the lack of callbacks that get done. A topic which was covered at length in threads about that news clip recently. The other problem is that the nature of the customers ERAC serves.
ERAC is first and foremost a replacement market company. The cars their customers own are in the shop for some reason so both ERAC and the customer are relying on the insurance company to appraise the damage/approve the repairs and the shop to get the parts/repair the car. I can't give an accurate statistic but I would say that a majority of repairs I saw in my 4 years at ERAC went at least a little longer than anyone first guessed (anywhere from a day to a few days to weeks and even months). In fact, I'd say that it is only a stunningly small percentage of repairs that are accurately estimated for length of rental.
Because of that, there is no way to accurately predict when the customer will be done with ERAC's car. This inaccuracy is minimized with callbacks being done on time, but two questions arise: how often are callbacks done and how far out are callbacks accurate? Service writers who respond to ERAC's callbacks (I think) can only accurately predict within a week whether a customer's car will be complete. Beyond that, and they are likely waiting for parts or are backed up in the shop and that means they could be out by at least a day or two in their estimation.
So within a week or less, ERAC has no real idea about returning cars. Add to that the problem of cars returning with damage, requiring servicing, or being sold. I would say, from the 4 branches I worked at, the branch manager only had a good idea of what was returning within the next three days at the best of times in a replacement-focused branch.
If ERAC just served the replacement market, this probably wouldn't be a big deal because as cars cycle through they can generally get people going. Times will be tight, times will be loose, but overall, people will get going in vehicles.
But ERAC also wants to serve the lucrative road warrior market and that is a market that requires specific cars (usually more specific than those required by the replacement market) and specific times. Unfortunately, ERAC is still using the replacment mentality while trying to serve the road warrior market.
Given their current operating model, I really have no idea how they can fix it in order to accomodate the road warrior. In order to fix it they need to get an accurate read of returning vehicles and from what I saw, that would be virtually impossible in more than a week. |
I understand there are uncertainties in when vehicles come back, and of course this uncertainty could be reduced by doing more callbacks. The problem here is not that there's uncertainty, it's that Enterprise insists on running so tight at 92% occupancy. When you're that short on cars, there's no shortage of excuses why they don't honor reservations, and I heard most of them at my branch.
Enterprise honors precisely as many reservations as it wants to, by adjusting the occupancy rate. To dial it way up, and then claim "Oh my gosh, we can't be sure when the cars are coming back!" is just an excuse. Ten of my fifteen reservations were dishonored. That's not bad luck, that's profit maximization at my expense, masquerading as bad luck.
I agree that Enterprise, as it runs today, will never be able to serve the road warrior market effectively. They can't be all things to all people, despite the fact that the VP who came out to visit with me insisted that road warrior customers were absolutely the right kind of customer for Enterprise.
To be successful, the airport branches are going to have to run by a different set of rules, and the interactions between airport branches and normal branches is going to be stressful and difficult and never get resolved.
They're going to generate an endless string of dissatisfied customers at the airport. I've been using this other nationwide chain now for almost two years while I wait for Enterprise to get it together. It's heaven compared to Enterprise. It's fast and efficient and they just deliver perfectly every time. It takes 20 minutes on average to get an Enterprise car, it takes 45 seconds on average for me to rent a car. The difference is a nineteen minute prison sentence every time someone rents from Enterprise. No road warrior will put up with that for very long.