15 Ways to Improve Customer Experience in a Rental Business

You may have heard the saying that happy customers are happy business. Because positive customer experience:

Enhances your business popularity
Increases referral rate
Brings in more returning customers
Gives good ratings on review sites
And more

Now, the question is how to achieve greater customer satisfaction. Start with simple things!

Some rental businesses forget basic things when they try to grow. They spend vast amounts of money on ads and social media influencers. And spend about the same amount making their websites look good with cool designs. Although all these are essential, there are more critical strategies that can enhance customer satisfaction.

Here are the top 15 ways to improve customer satisfaction in a rental business:

1. Describe your products accurately.

List all your rental products on your website with accurate prices, descriptions, and clear images.

Online shoppers prefer to get as much information about the rental items as possible. If your website inventory does not provide enough information, the potential customer may need to contact you just to get the basic information, which is frustrating and time-consuming.

For example, if you rent trailers, provide their dimensions, carrying capacity, hitches required to install on a truck, etc. on your descriptions and provide sharper images.

2. Provide instant quotes.

The first thing customers want to know is your rental prices. If the prices are not attainable on your website, customers may need to contact you again to learn your prices. No one likes that process, specifically the new generation of internet users.

Implementing an instant quoting system on your website may be challenging or costly for business owners. But many rental software solutions like Reservety let you implement a quoting system on your website within minutes.

3. Enable Online Bookings.

People nowadays prefer to book rental items without visiting an office. It means you need a booking system that lets customers independently choose items and add-ons (e.g., accessories, installation services, etc.), indicate rental durations (e.g., hourly, daily, weekly, etc.), pick delivery options, and complete the bookings with electronic payment methods.

If you are not a coder, implementing the online booking system will be costly as you either need to buy a separate plugin or hire a web developer. Luckily, you can avoid those unnecessary costs when you build your rental store with Reservety.

4. Be reachable.

Have reliable communication channels so customers can reach you when they have questions or need assistance.

For example, Reservety lets you establish a Live Chat system, the most preferred communication method on your website. It lets customers contact you instantly, share documents and images, and establish real-time communication with your company.

Apart from live chat, it would be best to have traditional means of communication such as phone, email, and physical address.

5. Let customers pay electronically.

There are so many payment options available online. When you integrate most of them into your rental business, the customers can pay for your rental items at their convenience.

For example, Reservety lets your customers pay for rental items with credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard, Amex, or digital wallets such as PayPal, Square, Stripe, etc.

6. Always have an availability calendar.

People like to plan their rentals ahead of time. Therefore, your rental website must accurately indicate when inventory is available or reserved for which dates and hours.

For example, Reservety implements an availability calendar fully synched with a booking system, which gets updated based on bookings and returns.

Let's say someone books an item for the weekend; the item will be indicated unavailable in the calendar system, and it will be disabled from the booking system unless the renters attempt to book it for the date after the item's expected return date.

7. Reward consistent renters.

To gain the loyalty of customers who consistently rent from you, create a rewards program or generous discount coupons. Small rewards can motivate customers to come back for more business as they feel that the business appreciates them. You can do all these with Reservety as well.

8. Create Surveys.

No matter how hard we try, we all have some weaknesses. The best way to catch them is to look at our business with the eyes of our customers. Creating surveys and analyzing customer feedback helps us to determine the areas we need to improve.

Creating surveys or feedback forums can be done through Reservety. It helps develop professional surveys and lets you embed them on your web pages and send them to bulk users with simple steps. Once completed, the survey results will be visible on your dashboard.

9. Integrate Your Business with Google Maps.

This method is a double-edged sword. Firstly, it helps your business to appear in the local search results. For example, if someone searches keywords such as "golf cart rentals near me" or "golf cart rentals in [area]" on Google, the search results will display your business. Secondly, Google Maps integration makes it easier for renters to get precise directions to your business with a single click.

10. Make Your Website Multilingual.

You never know who will visit your online rental store. Sometimes, renters may be tourists from other countries or people who do not know the native language of your country.

When you make your website multilingual with the help of Reservety, you broaden your market reach and improve the customer experience.

11. Accept Digital Signatures.

rental business digital signature system

Rental business involves several types of documents that need to be signed by your customers. Those documents include:

- Rental Agreements that include the terms and conditions of renting and using the rental items. It also includes the fees and penalties for late returns and any deviations from the points shown in the agreement.

- Liability Waivers are another legal document that makes the customers responsible for the injuries and damages that occur while using the rental equipment.

- Insurance Documents that can be purchased with the rental equipment to avoid huge expenses in the event of an accident.

- Any other documents that must be signed to promote transparency between the business and the renter.

Those documents need to be signed before the completion of bookings. The problem is that some rental businesses ask the renters to come to their offices to sign them, which can be inconvenient for people with packed schedules.

To remedy that situation, Reservety lets to create professional agreements and waivers with unique terms and conditions and prompts them to receive the renters' electronic signatures during the booking process. All the signed documents become visible under the files of each booking.

12. Create a checklist to handle bookings.

Quick and accurate order handling is the best step to achieve greater customer satisfaction in the rental industry. Customers expect you to deliver the booked rental items or make them ready for pickup on time.

So, when you have a checklist (which may include a packing list), you take a systematic approach to order handling. The last thing you want is to forget to pack something while delivering it hundreds of miles away. Also, checklists make the process efficient as you apply the same tactics repeatedly during the rental process.

13. Let customers create their accounts and manage them independently.

No one likes to be depended on something or anyone. And that includes customers, too. Long-term customers may not like to contact the business every time they need to update or change minor things (e.g., current addresses, attached IDs, billing details, or on-file documents such as IDs, etc.).

From time to time, customers may want to view their previous orders and transactions or their orders' status. Therefore, your rental website should allow customers to do those things independently by letting them create and manage their accounts.

Autonomous customer accounts surely boost customer satisfaction, and you can implement this strategy with Reservety. It lets your customers create their rental accounts on your website. It also enables you to create accounts on behalf of your customers through your office computer. And you and the customers can manage those accounts based on the set privileges.

14. Use a POS system integrated with Online Bookings.

POS system is vital to serve customers who visit your office in person or over-the-phone clients. A good POS system should also work harmoniously with online bookings to avoid double bookings or other contradictions in scheduling.

For example, Reservety's rental software includes a POS system and an Online Booking System; both feed the booking data to the same system, and the order schedules appear in the same calendar.

15. Provide Customer-Centered Support.

Good customer support is the golden ticket for better customer satisfaction. Customer support should be genuine, compassionate, helpful, and convenient. Here are the ten best ways to deliver better customer support in a rental business:

Listen to customer concerns or questions attentively.
Allocate enough time to resolve their issues
Appoint one manager per client (Reservety approach)
Try to solve the conflicts in favor of customers, if possible.
Be reachable through live chat, phone, and email.
Have a pleasant office to interact with customers in person
Work on your communication and human skills.
Admit your mistakes, apologize, and compensate accordingly
Use positive language, empower, and address your customers by name
And follow up with customers and offer additional support if needed.

Final Words

Provided 15 tips for enhanced customer experience will help you build a warm business relationship with customers and boost your rentals, ensuring sustainable growth. Of course, implementing all these strategies one by one manually will suck the last drop of your energy, not to mention how much time and resources they will consume. Luckily, you can streamline all those strategies plus more with Reservety.

Currently, Reservety offers a 14-day risk-free trial with premium features. And the best part is that the sign-up does not require credit cards or long-term contracts. Plus, they are helping new users to create a new web design and migrate their old websites to their system for free.