Avis Southern Africa re-engineers customer experience to dominate a hyper-competitive car-rental market.

Market Challenge: Competing Beyond Price in a Saturated Vehicle Rental Market

In a highly competitive, price-sensitive vehicle rental market, Avis Southern Africa needed to protect and grow market share. With low switching costs and products easily imitated, differentiating purely on price or product wasn't viable. They aimed instead to transform their culture by making every employee an active steward of the customer experience.

Strategic Approach: Building a Comprehensive CX Ecosystem

Resonancy partnered with Avis Southern Africa to design and roll out the CX Integration & Brand-Ambassador Programme starting in 2003. Rather than treating customer experience as a one-off survey or end-of-journey score, we embedded it at the heart of day-to-day operations.

Key pillars included:

• Multi-channel measurement at the interaction level (voice, SMS, email, web, and counter) ensured that every customer touchpoint across all business units and departments was included—not just a post-rental NPS. This made it possible to pinpoint the exact moment in the journey where loyalty was won or lost.
• CATI interviews (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) enabled deep conversational feedback where agents could follow up on low scores in real time—uncovering root causes that self-completion surveys typically miss.
• Feedback-to-action loops: Data wasn't siloed—it was mapped back to the specific employee, process, or branch responsible, making it immediately actionable. If something broke trust, we knew where and how to fix it.
• Role-specific dashboards: We built BI tools that made customer sentiment as tangible and trustworthy as financial KPIs. Executives could see systemic issues; front-line staff could improve based on real customer input.
• Culture transformation: Every employee, from counter staff to the executive committee, was trained as a Brand Ambassador. CX performance was tied to bonuses, making loyalty-building a shared responsibility.

The result was not just high scores, but a high-resolution understanding of what those scores meant and how to act on them.

Business Impact: Market Leadership Through Customer Centricity

Avis achieved remarkable business outcomes:

• Dominant Market Share: Avis secured the highest global market share among all Avis licensees, commanding 35% of South African check-ins and leading in 7 out of 8 market segments.
• Top Brand Recognition: Ranked as the #1 Car-Hire Brand in the Sunday Times Top Brands B2B Index with a Brand Relationship Score nearly three times higher than its nearest competitor.
• Enhanced Customer Loyalty: Despite a known price premium, Avis maintained regular usage by 54% of the B2B market, twice that of its closest competitor.

To become truly customer-centric, you need to measure your customer's opinions of your service… our Customer Satisfaction Index is the highest it has ever been on a consistent basis since measurement began in 2003.

Future Outlook: Sustaining CX Leadership

Avis Southern Africa continues to refine and advance its CX program, ensuring sustained market leadership and enduring customer loyalty.