When Enterprise Holdings, the world’s largest vehicle rental company, changed its name to Enterprise Mobility last month, the company said it was meant to reflect its expansion beyond the car rental business for which it is best known.
While the new name could invoke that of a cell phone company, the “mobility” in question refers to helping customers get around, whether it be truck rentals, vehicle fleet management for small businesses, car sharing, or temporary modes of transportation after a motor accident.
“We are way more than a rental car company,” Enterprise CEO Chrissy Taylor tells Coins2Day. The three top-rated rental brands, as ranked by J.D. Power, belong to Enterprise, but renting cars to individuals is a notoriously tough business. (Hertz Holdings, for instance, filed for bankruptcy protection early in 2020, under a mountain of debt, and reemerged in June 2021.) The car rental industry is subject to the ups and downs of the secondhand car market since these agencies dispose of cars after a certain amount of mileage. The industry also faces pressure from the enormous overhead cost of managing thousands of locations and hundreds of thousands of automobiles. What’s more, the public does not particularly love the sector because of the hassles involved in retrieving a car and the price surges over the past two years.
Enterprise’s willingness to evolve beyond its core car-rental business helped it hit $35 billion in its last fiscal year, up from $25.9 billion when Taylor, whose grandfather founded Enterprise in 1957 as a car leasing company, took the reins in 2019. The business today is larger by revenue than Avis Budget Group and Hertz combined. It has a much bigger presence in truck rentals and the management of small businesses’ car fleets and is making further international inroads than its rivals.
To pad that lead, Taylor wants to make Enterprise as ubiquitous in the foreign markets in which it already operates, like Britain and France, as it is in the U.S. She also plans to integrate electric vehicles into Enterprise’s fleet and use technology to better manage the 2 million vehicles under its remit.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Given that several consumer-facing brands, like Enterprise, National, and Alamo, make up your company, why rename the parent company if everyday people won’t know the difference?
It more fully and accurately describes who we are and what we do today. My grandfather founded us as a leasing business in 1957, and over 65 years later, we’ve evolved in terms of geographies, customer segments, and products and services. We are way more than a rental car company.
Does the renaming stem from a desire to distance Enterprise from the rest of the car rental industry, which isn’t particularly beloved by consumers?
We have nine distinct businesses, and every single one of them can grow. We love rental, and we will continue to invest in that space. But there are so many more experiences we can offer our customers. We need to tell our story better, and Enterprise Mobility helps us do that and reposition ourselves in the market.
Your three rental brands ranked Nos. 1, 2, and 3 in J.D. Power’s rental car satisfaction study last month. What do you think they do better than those of rivals Avis and Hertz?
Our philosophy is to take care of our customers and employees first, and then everything else falls into place. So it’s things like advanced check-in, where you give your rental information ahead of time and can bypass the counter.
Where does workforce training fit into this in terms of striving for an attentive and engaged workforce?
A majority of the people we hire go into our management training program. We want to teach you all of the aspects of running a business. That means marketing, profits and losses, customer service, and developing employees, so they’re basically getting their MBA on the job. It’s a competitive advantage for us. We want people to think of us as a career and not just a job. As they’re coming up through our system, they can branch off, and it feeds all of our other business lines. Our retention rates have never been better.
In 2021, your rival Hertz announced it had placed an initial order for 100,000 Tesla electric vehicles (EVs). But they are still a modest part of rental car companies’ fleets. What’s your attitude toward them?
We embrace the responsibility and opportunity to transition our fleet to EVs. What’s important is that we take a long-term perspective. As a private company, Enterprise doesn’t have to manage quarter to quarter, so we want to be strategic. When we think about EVs, we need an outstanding customer experience. But these cars are different, and they have a lot of new technology people aren’t aware of. We know there is range anxiety (the fear of an EV not having enough power to get to one’s destination), and we have to make sure there is charging available. So we have a team partnering with utilities and working on what infrastructure we need.
What about autonomous vehicles? Can they be part of your fleet eventually?
Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is further out. We are actively engaging with partners in the mobility space to assess them. Our priority is to grow our understanding of AVs.
What about car sharing? Why hasn’t that taken off in a big way?
While it is growing, it is much smaller than the rest of our business lines. It is increasing in the business-to-business (B2B) segment, where employers will have a group of vehicles they make available to employees for appointments, day trips, or whatever.
You and your rivals have rushed to digitize your cars so they can be managed and maintained remotely. That could enable the use of apps and smartphones in lieu of keys and eliminate the need to deal with an agent in person. Is it conceivable that the rental counter could disappear one day?
I do believe technology will drive a streamlined experience where you don’t have to go to a counter. But we have all sorts of customers: the business renter, the leisure visitor, the road warrior, the B2B customer, the insurance replacement customer, and I think each one needs something different. Take insurance replacement cars. This is an infrequent renter who is dealing with multiple organizations, including their insurer, the body shop, and so on. Or the person who wants to buy a car from us. That will be very difficult to coordinate only through tech and without a person.
Do you ever worry about climate change causing a backlash against travel and, by extension, problems for Enterprise?
We want to make sure that we operate our business with future generations in mind. For business rentals, for instance, we want to help those businesses hit their sustainability targets. We want to grow business lines that benefit the environment, such as carpooling and vanpooling. As climate change happens, there will be more pressure to do the right thing.
You’re the granddaughter of the founder of Enterprise and the daughter of a former CEO. How did that affect your rise within the company? Were previous bosses or colleagues wary of being tough on you?
I started as an intern in 1995, and it was clear from the start I was going to be doing the same thing as everyone else. At times, I was like, “Now I’m starting to understand what my dad was talking about at the dinner table.” Now, I know I am CEO, and I am a family member, and any CEO sometimes has a challenge getting feedback. So it’s up to me to ask for feedback.
Is there another generation of Taylors being groomed for the top job at Enterprise?
I have two daughters, the eldest being 13, so it will be a slow roll. But they already understand what it means to be a good steward of the business, employees, and customers. The most important thing to the family is to help the company and not be a hindrance. We love this business, so I will teach my girls that it is about our customers and employees first for whatever they do.
What if they don’t want to go into the family business?
That’s fine, too.
