Inclusion is key to great customer service

Successful businesses and brands make all customers feel welcome and valued. This is how inclusion becomes key to great customer service.

Today, these are also the same businesses that make all employees feel welcome and valued. The two go hand in hand.

So much so, that the judges at this year’s Business in the Community Race Equality awards, where we won the recruitment prize, all said that our company came across so well as a diverse and inclusive employer that they would all want to rent from us in future.

Organisations thrive when they make a point of showing they care about every person who walks through their door or get in touch on the phone or online.

However, we are living in an age when on occasion, some customers and employees may not always feel welcome.

Inadvertently, our behaviour can sometimes make people feel excluded, despite everyone’s good intentions.

This is called ‘unconscious bias’. It means that without our knowing or realising, we may behave in ways that can leave certain customers – or colleagues – feeling unwelcome or excluded.

This is why I am so passionate about all of the initiatives at Enterprise that foster diversity and inclusion. It means that as a business we are becoming even more sensitive to ensuring that everyone that touches the Enterprise family feels like they are a part of it – that they can belong.

Just in the past few months Enterprise has been involved in promoting the government’s Race Charter pledge for racial equality, and the BITC’s second Race At Work survey. We’ve won awards for being diverse recruiters, and for creating opportunities for people from all social and economic backgrounds.

I am so grateful for the efforts that all of our employees make to increase diversity and inclusion at Enterprise. Please continue the great work you’ve all be doing, as I will continue to support it.

I know that many of our employees are working in exciting and diverse locations where people from many different backgrounds and walks of life will want to rent a car from us.

One minute you will be dealing with a business executive, the next with a frantic parent, then someone who has just had their vehicle damaged on the way to a critical event.

We help people get to hospital, to work, to see loved ones, to attend some of the
most important moments in their lives. It’s an enormous privilege to enable people to stay mobile.

So, it is very important that each and every one of our customers feels that we care about their needs and that we value them as individuals as well as customers. And it is equally important that all employees feel this way too.

Thank you for all you do to make this such a great place to work and do business.