Dollar/Thrifty has announced that they are abandoning their rollout of check-in kiosks at car rental locations across America. While kiosks are part and parcel of airlines, hotels, and some car rental agencies, they’re not working out for Dollar/Thrifty. From their press release:
“While we were pleased with some aspects of the pilot program that we implemented in April 2008 at our Houston location, we have concluded that the use of kiosks in the customer service experience reduced our interaction with the customer, detracting from the high level of personal service that our customers have come to expect from us. Additionally, the pilot project did not satisfy our minimum return on invested capital, thus we concluded that continued full-scale development of self-service kiosk was not in our shareholders’ best interest,” said Scott L. Thompson, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Hmm. There are two arguments there. 1) Kiosks hurt the customer experience. 2) Kiosks cost too much.
I am skeptical about #1. Unless the person behind the counter refuses to handle any requests and insists on sending all customers to the kiosk, there’s no reason why kiosks wouldn’t supplement the rental experience. Frequent travelers are comfortable using a kiosk, after all.
The cost issue is plausible. Especially in the current credit environment. Machines aren’t cheap, after all.
But here’s another possible financial reason which they’re not fleshing out: It’s easier for a customer to avoid an upsell when they’re interacting with a kiosk, than when they’re dealing with a person. So the kiosk might cause the company to lose out on revenue.
The person behind the counter can try to scare or convince an easily manipulable customer into spending more of their money. A kiosk is less convincing.
My own experience with car-rental kiosks (albeit not with Dollar or Thrifty) has been pleasant, quick, and efficient. The effort to upsell is minimal, and it’s easy to decline coverages without any hassle. Maybe that’s the problem.
Related:
- In defense of kiosks
- Five ways to get an edge over other air travelers
- Alamo and National speed up rental car checkout
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December 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I think this is the key statement…
“Additionally, the pilot project did not satisfy our minimum return on invested capital…”
This means they had a threshold and it wasn’t met. Not sure what they were expecting – maybe upsell, maybe reduction in counter staff, but they didn’t get there. Throw in a few customer complaints and it’s an easy decision for them.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
>It’s easier for a customer to avoid an upsell
Bingo!
December 11th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
That level of “personal service” is hard to replicate in a machine when trying to use FUD to convince you that you *really need* that extra daily insurance protection.
IMO, I’d rather deal with a machine than a person. The machine doesn’t talk back, give me a bad attitude, and when all I really need is to check-in and get keys, it’s much more efficient than a human. Plus, if it’s after hours, then what am I supposed to do? Talk to myself?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I generally try to avoid self-serve kiosks. With car rentals, it’s because I usually just burn a lot of time and then have to talk to a person anyway. (My credit card has my name spelled slightly differently from my license.
But also because (especially in supermarkets) I don’t like the idea that the company is getting ME to do work for free that they would otherwise pay someone to do. Give me a discount and I’ll think about self-serve.