The Car-Rental Enterprise Of CEO Andy Taylor
Investor's Business Daily
In 1989, Enterprise Rent-A-Car found that 66% of its customers loved driving its product.
Many firms would celebrate such a number.
Not Andy Taylor.
As chief operating officer, he was alarmed — and aimed to boost that score. Yet by 1994 — three years after he rose to CEO — the top number had sunk to 60%.
Then he found the magic formula: No local or regional manager would be promoted without a customer service score that was above the corporate average.
Today 80% of Taylor's customers say they are completely satisfied.
With Happy Drivers
It's no wonder the family-owned Enterprise Holdings, which now includes the Enterprise, Alamo, and National brands, took in a record $14.1 billion in revenue (up 12%) last fiscal year, making it the world's largest car rental firm (Hertz (HTZ), No. 2 in the U.S., has revenue around $8 billion).
"Andy Taylor is an exceptional leader, a person of character and a role model," Christine Riordan, dean of the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver, told IBD. "Through his strategic skills, hard work and concern for others, he's built Enterprise Holdings into one of the world's largest private companies, and both Enterprise and Andy have had a very positive effect on their communities at a time when the world needs more people who care."
Taylor's father, Jack, founded a car-leasing company in St. Louis in 1957 with $100,000 and seven cars, naming it after the aircraft carrier Enterprise, on which he had served as a Navy aviator during World War II.
Andy, now 63, joined at 16, washing cars during holidays and summer vacations to learn the basics.
He took a break to earn a degree from the Daniels College of Business, then for three years worked for RLM Leasing, a Ford Motor (F)affiliate in San Francisco.
Taylor returned to the family firm in 1973, when the company had only 5,000 cars. He became St. Louis regional manager in 1976 and in four years — at age 31 — he was named president and COO. more>
