At AnswerLab, we advise many companies that grapple with a substantial strategic challenge: How to ensure they provide a seamless, unified customer experience across channels, including online, mobile, brick-n-mortar, and phone. Zipcar is clearly rising to the challenge, providing a holistic user experience across touchpoints.
After joining AnswerLab in July, I signed up for a Zipcar account (AnswerLab has a corporate account to support employees’ travel to local clients). Zipcar clearly knows its target audience – busy, mobile people with places to be. Every aspect of the customer experience – signup, reservation, driving, filling up the tank, and car return – has clearly been designed with user experience in mind. Here are just a few noteworthy examples:
Clear, Cross-channel Communication of “The Rules”
The Zipcar model works because they’ve established 6 core rules – without these critical rules like returning vehicles on time and full of gas, the model would collapse. If you think back to a traditional rental car experience, the rules are often buried in the fine print of a multi-page lease agreement. Unawareness of the rules can lead to some unexpected fees.
In contrast, Zipcar’s rules are explicit, clear, and simple. I’ve got them memorized, and they appear below. Why do I have them memorized? Because they’re communicated clearly and reinforced at key touch points. Note the effective use of imagery used on the site (top), and the concise rules on the back of the Zipcard (bottom).
6 Simple Rules
The ZipCard
Differentiating on Customer Experience
In today’s competitive marketplace, no company can afford to ignore customer experience, and building a great customer experience requires deeply understanding customer needs, often through research. It’s clear that Zipcar has done its homework by eliminating the pain points commonly associated with traditional rental car providers to provide a “Wheels when you want them” experience. There is no hard upsell on the car; simply choose a list of available cars online or through their iPhone or Android App. There are no long lines to talk to agents to pick up your car; just “unlock” by touching your Zipcard to the windshield. There is no hard sell for pricey insurance or lectures or surcharge on prepaid gas; they’re already included.
4 Simple Steps
Reserving a car from an iPhone App
They Design for Humans – and Humans Sometimes Make Mistakes
What would be one of the quickest ways to take a Zipcar out of commission? Having a customer lose the keys. The smart way to avoid this pitfall is not to assess fees for lost keys, but rather to prevent it from happening in the first place. By designing for mistakes – one of the most savvy strategies a business can take – Zipcar ensures no vehicle is taken out of circulation due to lost keys by securing them via a nylon cord so they keys never leave the cars in the first place.
They Foster a Sense of Community and “Ownership”
As mentioned earlier, the Zipcar model can only be successful if people can depend on the cars being available and ready to drive (i.e., full of gas). One way of ensuring compliance is by making the rules very clear. Another, perhaps more powerful strategy, is to instill a sense of personal commitment to the Zipcar community and the cars in their fleet. It’s not just about returning the car on time because it’s a Zipcar rule, what’s more important is to consider that you’re impacting another Zipster – a person just like you, with meetings to get to and people to see. It’s not just about keeping the car clean and reporting damage for the sake of following the rule, but it’s about taking care of Snowy or Mushu (yes, each car has a name) or whatever car becomes your “favorite” and ensuring you see that the car is maintained and reliable for your future use.
Oh Yeah, They Have Great Mobile Apps, Too
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Zipcar’s iPhone and Android apps are also models of great user experience. They focus on simple tasks such as making or reviewing reservations, fun but useful features (remotely honking the horn of the car you’re looking for!), are easy to use, nicely reinforce the brand imagery, etc. I mention the mobile experience lastly because it’s a given that Zipcar would need to have robust mobile apps to meet the needs of the audience they serve. No doubt they followed a user-centered design process to create their apps.
What is more interesting – and more challenging from a business standpoint – is to put as much thought into the design of the entire holistic Zipcar experience. It is their customer focus – a deep understanding of customer needs – that truly sets Zipcar apart from its competitors and serves as a model for any other company looking to be the leader in their industry.
