My Qantas flight landed on time so off I headed, confirmation and No 1 Club 5 Star member card in hand, to the Hertz Gold Service counter at Melbourne Airport.

The bay number after my name read an ominous “see office”.

At the office I learned that my car, which was booked for 10:00 am (and it was now 11:05 am) was not ready.

The station manager fussed about and said he could get me a car soon (and he did) and I was on my way in a somewhat lower class of car than ordered. An hour later I noticed that I had still be charged for the higher class of car so I phoned Hertz.

After waiting in one of those “we value your business so we have placed you in a queue” queues I tried calling the head office switchboard and asked to speak to Jacqui Lehmann-Vogel, the Hertz Manager in Australia. The receptionist, Annie, (who refused to tell me her name) told me in no uncertain terms that Ms Lehmann-Vogel does not take calls from customers – they have to be directed to the customer service department. When I queried her she said “our executives don’t talk to customers”.

Well eventually I got through to a customer service representative who did all the usuals – reduced the rate, provided a credit, said I could exchange the car at the City office for the type confirmed and offered to send me a free one-day rental certificate as compensation. All wonderful, but I had to take my time to go and change cars and my time to call them several times before I got through.

Yes, I saved a few dollars (which is frankly irrelevant in a business situation) but what I remember is “Executives Don’t Talk to Customers at Hertz”.

Maybe Hertz should find some executives who do talk to customers. Or even train their airport staff how to deal with service recovery (when something goes wrong – not after the customer has had time to become even more upset).

It’s a lesson for us all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under Customer Service, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.