Anticipation Stories (1)

Finally, vacation time! It’s been already 3 years, and we were all excited. We took the red-eye to FLL and went straight to the rent-a-car agency. I am not going to divulge the brand of the agency, but it sounds like a brand of mayonnaise. I like to see my name on a billboard so we flied to the car area allowed, and found a good car. We accommodated the luggage, the car seats and the kids. Time to have fun!

But the journey lasted very little. When I showed my ID for finishing my paperwork, the clerk tells me:

• the car had a damage, which impeded me to take the car with me;
• the details of the damage were unknown;
• if we want to keep the car, we have to wait for the mechanic to arrive and fix the issue. No estimated time of completion.

Of course, with such a high-uncertainty scenario, we decided to switch the car.

The clerk immediately follows us, and with a marker, she writes in the car's window “Stop mm. Do not rent”. We ourselves had to unload and reload all the things, yes, including the grumpy kids, -it is already 7 AM-, and restart the trip. Of course this was a nuance compared with all the excitement, and it was quickly forgotten.

Now, big learnings for us #analytics people:

• You need to establish an actionable process for these exceptions. If you have a car that has a damage, the action is to flag it and leave it in a non-accessible section. Expect a customer will select that very car #anticipate;
• Share the information with the team, so the clerk knows what the failure is all about, and what time is the car ready for the next customer;
• If you fail to act, make the customer love the brand again. Offer an upgrade, give free fuel gas option, help him with the luggage. You have to keep up your game if you want me to choose you again.

These are all #anticipation processes you need to design and deploy. Some of them would be very easy to implement and with little cost! The moment you have #actionables and #anticipation embedded in your processes, the customers will love you even more.

#data #visualization #reports #actionable