Customer satisfaction with car rental companies has bounced back to levels that existed before the economic downturn, according to a consumer survey released [Tuesday] by J.D. Power and Associates.
Every major car rental company posted a higher customer satisfaction score than last year, the survey of 11,567 renters shows.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car ranks highest in customer satisfaction for the seventh-consecutive year.
National Car Rental — which along with Enterprise and Alamo Rent A Car is owned and operated by Enterprise Holdings — ranks No. 2. Hertz ranks No. 3.
The survey, which polled consumers who rented cars at airports in North America during the 12 months ended in September, looks at six factors to measure overall customer satisfaction: costs and fees, pick-up process, rental car, return process, reservation process and shuttle bus or van service.
Car rental companies “appear on the path to addressing the areas of importance to the customer that they had to cut back on during the (economic) downturn,” says Stuart Greif, vice president at J.D. Power and Associates.
During the past two years, he says, customer satisfaction scores dropped as car rental companies instituted fees to offset a decline in revenue and cut costs by reducing staff and service, renting older cars and deferring repairs as fewer people traveled.
The new customer satisfaction scores indicate that “staff has been added back judiciously to help restore service levels,” and the rental companies “have started to address their fleet inventory needs with newer and lower-mileage cars,” Greif says.
The Scores
On a 1,000-point scale, Enterprise has an overall score of 786 — 16 points higher than a year ago. National’s score of 767 and Hertz’s score of 762 are 10 and 15 points more than last year, respectively.
Alamo Rent A Car’s 749 score is the fourth highest and 19 points higher than last year, but it is below…