When is it too late to send that text?
Yesterday I visited the AVIS® web site and reserved a car for an upcoming trip. They offered me a 10% discount if I gave them my phone number for text messaging purposes. Sure, I’ll take that. Car rentals can be expensive! I input my phone number and received a series of pop-up screens culminating in a 10% savings - that was automatically applied to my “first rental.”
I finished checking out and sure enough AVIS was kind enough to take 10% off of the rental. $75 to let them send me a text message or two? Sounds good to me. I can reply “STOP” any time I want.
Shortly thereafter, I get a welcome message, “You’re in!”
And a few minutes later, the same offer, “Thanks for visiting Avis! You’ve earned 10% off your first rental.”
And the next day, what did I receive? Another text message with the same offer. “Here’s the deal: 10% off your first Avis rental… (see below)
in answer to my question above, when is it too late to send that text? Well, how about, it’s too late to send if your customer has already cashed in on the offer. AVIS has designed a process that is seamless on the web site - they offered me 10% off and automatically applied the 10% off offer to my first rental - and then they sent me a text for 10% off of my first rental.
Well, I’ve already taken that 10% offer once and when I book again it won’t be a first time rental but rather my second rental. The next day, I received the same offer, a second time after I have booked my rental, for 10% off my first time rental. This raises a question or two and a few observations for me:
The live link included in the text message, will it actually work on my next rental for another 10% off or will I be viewed as a repeat customer rather than a new customer?
It appears that a pre-paid rental (pay now instead of waiting to pay at the counter at the time of rental) does not register soon enough as a rental in their messaging system.
The messaging system has a meaningful lag time (more than 24 hours)between the paid car rental and when the text messaging system starts it’s triggered messages.
The car rental transactional system is not connected to the messaging system, but instead the text messaging system operates in a silo.
The customer model AVIS uses may be geared toward the payments system and not the reservation system. And this begs the question of whether I get flagged as a new customer when I pickup the car or when I return the car?
All of this reminds me that silos of information, transactional systems and financial systems need to be connected to or integrated with your marketing messaging systems and should not be disconnected or acting independently. Customer experience, is not limited to online web systems, but rather should be more broadly thought of in regards to how your customer interacts with your brand and your triggered messaging systems. Text messaging processes need to by hyper aware of customer transactions and measurable interactions.
AVIS should be complimented for their use of text messaging and a seamless on-site 10% off coupon experience. However, it also appears as if there are a few gaps in the timing of text messages and customer experience that could be tightened up a bit.