Low-Mileage Rental Cars Key to Delivering Customer Satisfaction to Business Travelers

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Aug 11, 2014, 02:29 ET

ST. LOUIS, Aug. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Every month, National Car Rental's "Emerald Aisle" locations compete against one another at 65 airports throughout the U.S., not only focusing on customer service scores, but also car-class categories and mileage criteria. In fact, this triple-pronged measurement – called the Emerald Club Scorecard – specifically tracks mileage to ensure "Emerald Aisle" locations are providing vehicles with less than 20,000 miles.

"For 'road warriors,' low-mileage rental cars are always a priority," said Brad Carr, Vice President for Enterprise Holdings, which owns and operates National Car Rental as well as the Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Alamo Rent A Car brands. "As a result, we carefully measure this critical aspect of airport car rental all year long, constantly stressing business travelers' expectations while also holding our regional operators accountable for this key metric."

National Car Rental managers are able to evaluate all "Emerald Aisle" results throughout the U.S. at any time. "They can cross-check both their own rankings and others," explained Carr, "making the internal competitive process highly visible, totally transparent and extremely healthy."

It certainly appears that such companywide rivalry is fostering greater consistency at the airport and delivering superior customer service to Emerald Club members. For example, National Car Rental was the highest-ranked car rental brand in the J.D. Power 2013 North American Rental Car Satisfaction Study^SM for the first time since 2001, finishing well above the industry average.

National's high performance is further proof of the resurgence of the National brand. Just seven years ago, National's future looked anything but bright. Then, in 2007, the Taylor family – who already had owned and operated the successful Enterprise Rent-A-Car brand for 50 years – acquired National and its sister brand Alamo Rent A Car, creating Enterprise Holdings. The company took two years to fully integrate the National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car brands and, in the process, carefully drove strategic change throughout the organization. The Harvard Business Review recently highlighted this successful integration process in a candid "How I Did It" bylined article.

Meanwhile, Enterprise Holdings has invested tens of millions of dollars to upgrade National Car Rental facilities and technology and to create new marketing campaigns championing business travelers. Since the acquisition, National's market share has increased nearly 20 percent, and today Enterprise Holdings' overall presence now exceeds 33 percent at the airport.

For more information about Enterprise Holdings, visit www.ehi.com, and for details about the National Car Rental brand, visit www.nationalcar.com.

About Enterprise Holdings

Enterprise Holdings and its affiliate Enterprise Fleet Management together offer a total transportation solution. Combined, these businesses – which include extensive car rental and car-sharing services, commercial truck rental, corporate fleet management and retail car sales – accounted for $16.4 billion in revenue, employed 78,000 and operated 1.4 million vehicles throughout the world in fiscal year 2013. Enterprise Holdings, through its regional subsidiaries, operates the largest fleet of vehicles in the world through a global network of neighborhood and airport locations under the Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car brands. Enterprise Fleet Management provides full-service fleet management to companies and organizations with medium-sized fleets. Other transportation services marketed under the Enterprise brand name include Enterprise CarShare, Enterprise Rideshare, Enterprise Car Sales and Enterprise Commercial Trucks. Enterprise Holdings is the largest car rental company in the world as measured by revenue, fleet and employees.

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SOURCE Enterprise Holdings