Ryder is certainly an authority when it comes to customer engagement, customer experience, and customer loyalty−evidenced by its impressive performance at the Loyalty360 CX Awards held during the 2015 Engagement & Experience Expo, which was hosted by Loyalty360.
Rich Mohr, Vice President, Ryder Rental Operations, participated in a Q&A with Loyalty360 to discuss some of the company’s key themes.
How has mobile impacted your business, and what is your outlook in this regard for the future?
Mobile has impacted our rental business much like anywhere else and it is a major contributor to our online traffic as we have adjusted the way we do business to accommodate how our customers digest information. Roughly 45% of our online rental traffic is attributed to mobile. Because of that, we have a mobile responsive website allowing our customers to reserve vehicles online right from their smartphone or tablet.
We are about to launch our new experience for our loyalty program, RedZone, this January– and that website will now also be mobile responsive. In addition, Ryder just launched a mobile fuel app, Ryder FuelReceipt, allowing our customers to capture and submit their non-Ryder fuel receipts directly through the app. The updated digital process cuts down on paper work and makes sure that our customers are getting the correct taxes paid for the fuel they are purchasing. Ryder consistently strives to advance in technology and this is all part of that movement.
What does customer experience mean to you / your organization?
The customer experience is so much more than just saying “thank you” or providing a clean vehicle for them to rent, it is every touch point that they receive or experience from Ryder. This includes the perception they have of our business before they walk in the door as every message we put out in the marketplace affects our customers. If we promise something that we don’t deliver on, that is part of the experience therefore we have to make sure that we are providing the experience that we say we will. That is why Ryder focuses so much on our customer satisfaction surveys where we need a grounding point for how we are performing, and we need it to come from our customers. When we get feedback on things we should improve on, it goes all the way up to leadership. It is very important to us to show our customers that their opinion matters and can make a difference.
There a lot of metrics, studies, and benchmarks in the market around CX. What are the ways you measure that have led to such great success?
Our Voice of Customer (VOC) team has done a great job working with the business leaders in the U.S. and Canada to develop CSI surveys that report on the CX, Net Promoter Scores, and overall service that the customer experiences. Our seven-day close loop process then allows us to be able to follow up with customers that feel they have experienced something less than desirable. We want a way to right the wrong and learn from the 
experience. That truly is the most important part of measurement– what you do with the information. That has helped us build trust in our relationships with our customers.
What does (customer-centric culture, customer insights, employee engagement, measurement, technology, brand messaging) mean to the bigger CX efforts you are focused on?
Honestly, they are all combined and all play a very important role in CX. If you don’t have employee engagement you will not be able to engage your customer base, after all, you can put out the best technology and brand messaging but if your front line is not engaged when your customer walks in the door, you lose them there.
You have to have insight into your customer’s needs, expectations, and experiences with your brand and other brands to know how to improve or where to focus growth on. The only way to get this insight is through some sort of measurement. We use customer panels and CSI scores as measurement tools.
All of our focus on this as well as being a leader in technology is what drives our customer-centric culture. Communication both ways is very important as it used to be all about building a solid brand, now it is about building a relationship that will grow that brand.
We hear a good deal about alignment within the organization to increase the efficacy / impact of the CX efforts and that successful organizations are “committed” to such efforts. In your opinion, what does this commitment mean to you?
In any organization you typically have more than one touch point with the customer. For Ryder it is renting a truck, dealing with the service center, or through Ryder lease operations. One customer of ours could touch over 10 parts of our organization therefore having alignment in what type of experience we want to give the customer through all these touch points is key to building a trustworthy brand that is about more than just renting a vehicle. The commitment is extremely important and something that Ryder works on every day.
There is a lot of talk about new media (social) and how it can increase impact. How is social media being used differently today than a year ago, and how do you see it changing over the next year?
Just like the mobile experience, our customers are starting to digest information and communication differently. If you want to stay relevant you have to learn to communicate in a way that works. New media is being used differently, for example we are constantly taking inquiries and reviews from twitter. If customers have something to say, long gone are the days of them picking up the phone and calling corporate. I think this will continue to evolve, just like everything does.
What are the challenges you face with data, analytics, and creating insight today and how has that changed over the past 18 months?
The challenge is the amount of data and the fact you can slice an insight so many different ways. Finding better ways to prioritize the data and get good clean data continues to be a focus and a priority for my team. We have so many factors that affect our business, such as seasonality, geography and the economy. We have to take everything into account when analyzing where we want to go with the business next. I think the data and the analytics has gotten so much deeper in the past 18 months and I am hoping to see that really continue as there is nothing more satisfying than making a decision that is driven by solid insights.
What is the key to effective customer engagement?
The key is listening to your customers and providing a real value while engaging your employees to want to provide great service, no matter what.