Car rental can be a thorny issue. Most people who hire vehicles regularly can recount a tale of when they felt hard done by – either because they paid above the odds for fuel or insurance, or because the shiny new model they expected to find on the forecourt was… well, not so shiny, not so new, and not the model they requested.

Fewer people shout so loud about happy experiences – when they received top-class service, for example, or a surprise upgrade. Perhaps because when car hire firms get it right, it’s because they’ve managed to make the experience as uneventful as possible.

So what do frequent users of hired vehicles want from the companies who provide them? To find out, in April we held an editor’s lunch on the topic, which was attended by a wide cross-section of our readers. The event took place at the Savoy Grill (gordonramsay.com/thesavoygrill), in the recently refurbished Savoy hotel in London, and was kindly sponsored by Avis (avis.co.uk), whose success in meeting customer needs saw it named Best Car Rental Company Worldwide at last year’s reader-voted Business Traveller Awards.

Unsurprisingly, apart from keen pricing, good service was on the lips of many readers. “Customer service is important, as is being able to get your keys and into your car quickly,” said one reader. “What I think is missing from car rental companies is the personal touch, being treated as a special customer. You get that with airlines, but with most car rental firms, you don’t feel such an emotional bond. Sometimes there’s a lack of name check.”

Equally, readers felt it was important to get reliable service not just at one rental outlet but across all brand offices worldwide – a particular challenge for car hire companies, perhaps, because many are franchise-based. “Service is very different from branch to branch across all the firms,” one said. “There should be consistency whether you are hiring in Los Angeles, Sydney or London.”

Another called for useful items to be provided as part of loyalty programmes: “With some preferred schemes you can get your iPod charger as standard, so you don’t have to pack it. If as part of your scheme you got the practical things that the majority of business travellers would want to use, that would be a great addition.”

Anthony Ainsworth, commercial director of Avis UK, recognised the role loyalty schemes could play. “The challenge for us is getting the balance right between price and service. How do we incentivise you to rent with us again? These sorts of things are being worked on in our loyalty project.”

Also seen as crucial was to get what you’ve paid for. “Predictability is important,” one person said. “When you turn up and get something that they say is ‘similar’ but is completely different to what you had in mind, then that is a bit of a surprise. If we could take that surprise element out of it that would be good.”

Simple measures such as supplying a map of the area would also help. “What car rental companies rarely do is give you a decent map that even gets you out of the airport. This is a cheap and reasonable thing to do rather than selling you an overpriced sat nav system with the car,” one reader suggested.

The charges that rental firms levy on top of vehicle hire, such as for insurance and fuel, came in for criticism. “The bargain that you thought you got on the website can be shattered when you get to the branch and all they want is your initials on the form so they can charge you extra,” one said. “My experience is that, especially in London, they don’t really care who I am – all they care about is checking my driving licence, selling me the insurance and making sure I tick the boxes.”

The topic of fuel cost inspired particularly passionate debate, with participants reporting being charged a premium both by the car hire companies and by petrol stations located close to the airports. Suggestions made were for the rental firms to fill your tank for you at normal pump prices, making a small charge for the service, or to offer the option of purchasing half a tank of fuel rather than a full one.

Ainsworth recognised the challenges. “We cover every segment of the market – there are business travellers on tight budgets and there are those who aren’t, and there are people who are cash rich, time poor and vice versa, and we try to cover every possible area with our products. It is one of those areas that as an industry we could do better at but it is also an area that is a tremendous cost and risk to us, and I’m not sure what the simple solution is.”

So what else can be done to make hiring cars easier? One reader called for online booking systems to be simplified with fewer fields to fill in. Another said: “For big companies there is a variety of rental locations around cities and each of them opens and closes at a different time, so collection and delivery is not easy to arrange online. You have to choose what type of vehicle you want, then check it is available at your chosen location, then if it will be open. I would rather the system took you more by the hand.”

An approach more akin to what hotel websites offer could work, it was suggested. “If you go to the Hilton website and tell them: ‘I want to stay in San Francisco at this time,’ it tells you: ‘We have this, this and this.’ But car rental websites work the wrong way round – they work from the merchant’s perspective, not the customer’s.” One reader suggested “an expedia.com-type experience”, where the rental company organises everything for you depending on your itinerary and needs.

Some of the innovations Avis is working on include developing an online check-in tool, kiosks that give you your keys, and on-demand 24-hour technology allowing you to swipe your Avis Preferred card and collect your car. Such technological advancements may speed up the process, but can they really deliver the personal touch some people are calling out for? Readers were tied on the issue.

“If you are four hours late arriving at an unmanned location and there is any form of discrepancy about what you think you are going to get, then you need a human there to take away some of that angst,” one argued. Another said: “If I knew my flight was going to be late and I arrived after the hire car company had shut, I would really appreciate being able to swipe my card in the car park and grab my car. Frankly, the person at the desk is unimportant.”

Ultimately, every traveller will have their own preferences, and trying to meet them all will continue to be one of the biggest challenges for car rental firms.

Join our next debate

If you would like to attend the next editor’s lunch, please email Emma Gordon at [email protected], stating your name, job title, company and topics of interest.