How Important is Your Front Line?

We just got home from vacation. We had to rent a car. Which meant we had about a zillion places to choose from. We flew into Las Vegas (we don't gamble, but we sure can eat, and the food there is quite good). (Side note, we stayed at the Palazzo which we got for a cheap price on Priceline and it was fabulous.)

Anyway, the Las Vegas airport has a central car rental garage. Everyone takes the same shuttle over and then each car rental company has a space in a multi-story garage. There are security features set up to prevent you from stealing a car from this place. These include a large metal bar and tire shredders. In order to leave, you must take your rental car contract and scan the bar code on it. Then the metal bar raises up and the tire shredders go down and you can drive off.

Unless, of course, the front line person forgets to put a bar code on your contract. And by the time you have your car seats installed and your luggage shoved into the trunk, he has gone home, turning off the lights and locking the door. So, there we were: 12:30 a.m. Pacific time. We're East Coasters, so our body clocks were saying 3:30 a.m. I have one screaming infant and one helpful almost 5 year old saying, "what can I do to make you happier?" and my husband and I are dead tired and we are trapped in the garage. We call the car rental place's 800 number and the following conversation ensues:

Husband: We’re trapped in the garage in Las Vegas. We don’t have a bar code so we can’t leave.

Car Rental Customer Service Person: Why would you need a bar code?

Husband: You have to scan a bar code or you can’t get out. Everyone has gone home. So, we’re trapped.

Car Rental Customer Service Person: Just go ahead and exit, then. Don’t worry about the bar code.

Husband: We can’t exit. There’s a huge metal bar and tire shredders.

Car Rental Customer Service Person: Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait until morning when the workers come back. Sorry! Click!

My husband walked over to another company's booth and explained our plight. They gave us a bar code so we could exit.

Now, when we returned the car, 12 days later, the manager said, "How was your rental?" My husband explained. The manager took $150 off our bill. Even so, I would be very hesitant to rent from them again.

I didn't mention the name of the company on purpose. Why? Because while I was explaining this drama to my sister, who also flew from the east coast to the west for this reunion, she mentioned she'd rented from the same company, although she had flown into Salt Lake. She gushed with how wonderful everything had been. "They gave us a free upgrade! Provided cold bottled water for us! Carried our luggage! We're customers for life!"

Now, the original rental guy didn't leave us with any warm fuzzies--he made the mistake of not giving us a bar code, and he left before we did. That's bad customer service. The phone person was worse. Even if there was nothing he could have done, he made no effort to escalate the issue.

He probably figured, "hey, I'm only making $X per hour. What do I care?" He didn't care. But that is precisely why you need to be careful in hiring your front line people.

And now back to regular Evil HR Lady stuff.