Big Data Boost for Vehicle Rental Company

Published Jan-20-19

Breakthrough:
Multinational vehicle rental company increases revenue after mining its data for consumer insights.

Company:
Avis Budget Group, United States

The Story:

Big Data Boost for Vehicle Rental Company In this information age data is a valuable commodity that can help companies grow, make better decisions and improve the way they serve their customers. Leading vehicle renting services company Avis Budget Group is one such enterprise that has taken advantage of big data. It has used large volumes of customer information to identify new opportunities and increase revenue.

The multinational organization worked with IT services provider CSC to mine the data for new insights and opportunities. It developed a customer relationship management (CRM) and loyalty program which it said was one of the most important programs in its history.

Avis Budget had a lot of transaction data that needed to be analyzed for real-time actions such as offers and service treatments and an ever-increasing volume of unstructured data coming in from its website, call center, emails and social media channels.

"Before we arrived and started to work with Avis, the company was a transaction based company," said Alex Black, from CSC’s Big Data and Analytics practice. "Avis had a lot of transaction information, but none of it was aggregated by customer."

Challenges

CSC started with a customer valuation approach, which involved building a model to determine the most valuable customers and how to focus on them. Among the challenges that CSC and Avis Budget faced were creating a differentiating experience when someone rents a car and the issue of perception. Renting a car for business or leisure is widely viewed as a commodity.

Three-Year Plan

To create something different and new CSC developed a three-year plan that outlined the business, technological and organizational projects that were needed, along with their costs and timelines. Once Avis Budget gave the green light to the plan CSC went to work.

The IT services provider applied its model to the rental company's customer database which contained data of more than 40 million customers. They were ranked from the top down into value segments and CSC concentrated on the top value customers to drive offers and engender loyalty. At the same time, it was conscious not to alienate those customers who didn’t spend a lot of money because they might become high-value prospects in the future.

Excellent Results

With its new emphasis on studying the data, Avis Budget was given a 360-view of their customers that included their rental history, demographics, customer feedback, service issues and more. This approach made a big difference.

"The first thing our analytics told us was that we weren’t capturing all of the potential rentals from our existing clients," commented Tom Gartland, president of North America at Avis Budget. "We were missing something — which was really rich data.
“And what the data said to us is that there were opportunities to create relationships and provide offers that met client needs."

As a result of its big data work with CSC, Avis Budget saw improved customer loyalty, improved profitability and an increase in revenue of $200 million.

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