The big bad car rental company

I recently rented a car from one of the major car rental companies. During the trip, I had a flat tire. After changing it out for the spare, I called the roadside assistance number on my contract to let the rental company know what happened. They promptly answered and directed me to get the tire replaced at a local tire shop. They even made an appointment for me. They did tell me that I needed to pay for the tire up-front, then bring the receipt to the rental counter when I returned the vehicle for reimbursement.

The next day, I returned the vehicle and presented my receipt. The gentleman helping me didn’t have the authority to issue the reimbursement, so he called for his manager. The manager refused to reimburse me. I retold the story to him, letting him know that I was instructed by his company to replace the tire indicating that I would be reimbursed. Then he said, “roadside assistance phone operators aren’t employees of our company. They are an outsourced vendor.” I responded, “as a customer, I shouldn’t know or care. When they answered the phone, they identified themselves as this company.”

At this point, I was upset, but I try hard not to get angry with anyone who works in customer service. I redirected my anger into a question: “Are you refusing to reimburse me, or do you lack the authority to issue me a reimbursement?” He responded indicating that he didn’t have the authority. I asked who could help me, and he responded by giving me the business card of the General Manager, who wasn’t in, but would be the following day.

So, I left the counter and caught my plane home. The next day, the General Manager issued me my reimbursement over the phone and stated that the manager on-site should have given it to me on the spot the previous day. He genuinely apologized.

What went wrong?

There are a few organizational observations to make about this tale. First, it was the outsourced vendor who excelled in customer service, acting fully empowered to do what was necessary to resolve my flat tire situation. The employees acted without empowerment, deflecting all difficulty to higher levels of management. In the end, it appears that they acted with less empowerment than they actually possessed.

Second, when I pressed the on-site manager, rather than take responsibility for his vendor’s actions, he distanced himself from them. As the customer, I was oblivious to this distinction. He chose to bring it to my attention to somehow discredit the vendor and elevate his status as an employee. To what end? Ego? The need to be right? Did he think that this argument would make me capitulate? Should I lower my expectations as a customer just because the company chose to outsource roadside assistance? He couldn’t possibly think this would improve my opinion of the company in any way.

What can we learn?

Enterprise technology is a mixed bag of employees and vendors. Even if your shop is staffed exclusively with employees, you don’t write your own operating systems and build your own routers. For every customer service problem, there is opportunity to blame the vendor. It’s easy for me to make an example out of this car rental experience and point out their obvious missteps. We need to be intellectually honest and look at our own practices within our teams to see if we are just as guilty.

The next time you are in a customer service situation and one of your vendors is responsible for the failure, be cognizant of how you speak. Choose your words wisely, because it matters.  Instead of saying “the website is down and the vendor is working on it,” say “the website is down and we are working on it.” The first statement is factually accurate and probably won’t get you in trouble, but it communicates a divided enterprise technology organization, and also shows some lack of empowerment and accountability. When you obscure this distinction from the customer, you show collective ownership and accountability, which is exactly what the customer wants out of their technology teams.

There is a time to hold vendors accountable for when they fail. Work out your root cause analysis and SLA credits. That’s your job too, but don’t do it in-front of the customer.

Avoiding the blame game within your department is critically important both during a live incident, and during the root cause analysis that follows. The blame game is poison to your culture and will only cause more service outages in the future as people protect and hide early warnings. This article is all about extending this principle to the vendor community.

It’s easy to be a demanding customer and point out the shortcomings of large companies in mature industries. It’s hard to look in our own backyard and act with discipline, accountability, and empowerment in the presence of our own tough customers. To my readers in enterprise technology, stop throwing your vendors under the bus. To my readers in the vendor community, make us proud, knowing that you are an extension of our team.