Challenge
Having the flexibility to collect and drop off rental car keys after-hours massively improves the customer experience, and that couldn’t be more important for one of the biggest vehicle rental companies in the world.
Further to this, the COVID-19 pandemic restricted the business’ opening hours, making it all the more important for a streamlined after-hours service. Without a solution, customers were severely limited as to when they could collect or return their vehicle rentals.
Hertz Iceland is always looking to streamline the customer journey, and that’s why they made the initial approach to Keycafe.
They had previously been in partnership with another company, Creone, but didn’t feel that their system was accessible enough due to the inability to monitor keys online or through an app in the way that Keycafe can.
Solution
Keycafe’s key management system offers a live status for each key, enabling businesses to stay in control of when and where keys are picked up or dropped off. This allowed Hertz Iceland to take a step back from the check-in and check-out processes in a manual sense, and put much greater flexibility into the hands of the customers.
The team was able to utilize the Keycafe system by attaching codes for each vehicle key to the Keycafe system, which needs to be entered each time a key is picked up or dropped off at the SmartBox. As a result, they could keep on top of each pickup and dropoff and find out if any car was late or missing all within the Keycafe app.
Result
The team at Hertz Iceland was able to quickly adapt to using key codes with Keycafe rather than their previous key fob system. Now, they’re confident they made the right call to change, having seen real benefits to both themselves and their customers over the past few months.
While Hertz Iceland is still using the Creone system to some extent, they’re currently in a transitional period to move completely away from them. They’re happy to put their full trust in Keycafe.
The team is already planning its next moves to integrate Keycafe’s system more substantially with their own. To do this, they’ll be leveraging Keycafe’s API to link the Keycafe SmartBox to their system, enhancing the overall security and automation aspect of their setup.
Keycafe’s service provided the additional benefit of minimizing contact between staff and customers, increasing safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
