The importance of a seamless booking experience
Traditional booking methods can be a real headache—they are time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to delays, especially during busy seasons like summer. In today’s rental market, having a streamlined booking system isn’t just helpful; it’s crucial.
Our customers value ease of use, transparent pricing, and accurate vehicle availability. Proweb, Prohire’s web booking system, delivers precisely that. This online booking widget integrates directly into your website, providing real-time vehicle availability and pricing updates while cutting out unnecessary paperwork.
To understand the impact of a simplified booking process, we spoke with Tim Jeffery, General Manager at Alley Cat Car & Van Rentals, to learn about the benefits his company has experienced since implementing the Proweb system.
The story of Alley Cat Car and Van Rentals
Alley Cat Car & Van Rentals has successfully traded for over 25 years. Their journey began in 1995 when the Founder & Owner took his Escort Van to be serviced at a commercial Ford garage. Due to a mistake, the vehicle wasn’t ready for another four weeks. A courtesy van was provided, but it was in poor condition and lacked permission for a roof rack. To keep the business running, a second van was acquired.
Once the Escort Van was fixed, there was now a spare vehicle. During a visit to a trade warehouse, a passerby inquired where they could find a rental van. That conversation led to the first rental agreement and marked the beginning of Alley Cat’s success.
Over the next year, they purchased five more vans, and by 1999, they transitioned to full-time operations, expanding to include cars as well. In 2002, Alley Cat joined United Rentals and continued to grow their fleet. Today, Alley Cat Car & Van Rentals offers many vehicles, including cars, vans, minibuses, chillers, 4x4s, trailers, and campers.
Simplifying the Booking Process with Proweb
Traditional booking methods involve manual inquiries, paperwork, and payment processes, which open up the possibility of delays and inefficiencies. Tim recalls, “The process with the old ring binders took a long time to give the customers the necessary answers. Whilst we were held up on the phones, this impacted all areas of our service, keeping customers at the front desk waiting longer than necessary. The old system would also not have worked for multiple locations either. Prohire gave us the ideal solution to all our problems.”
During the summer rush, these issues can be catastrophic, leading to customer dissatisfaction and operational inefficiencies within the company. Tim adds, “Our customers demand speed. They want quick answers and confirmations with all the required information.”
“Our old dated ring binder booking folders became too much work! Allocating, shading and changing became a very laborious task. Besides, paper free is always better! Recommended by United, Prohire became the easy choice.”
Proweb is user-friendly, with a straightforward, intuitive design that allows customers to manage their booking from start to finish easily. There’s no need for phone calls or emails that slow down the rental process. Proweb’s interconnected ecosystem automatically communicates with other platform modules to ensure that automatic adjustments can be made to the information provided on vehicle availability or pricing, simplifying and thereby greatly enhancing customer experience.
Tim explains how Alleycat Rentals has experienced these benefits. “We love talking to our customers, but online bookings through Proweb help keep these things efficient; repeat customers can easily book again, allowing them to use previous details; this saves time at the desk, too. I haven’t found a smoother online booking process for vehicle rental”
What Makes Proweb stand out
Rental companies often need help ensuring that their customers receive accurate and up-to-date information about vehicle availability and pricing, leading to confusion and dissatisfaction. Tim points out, “Our customers must receive consistently accurate information. All the required fields and data points the customer is looking for are easily visible. The customisation from our side is vital. It helps that the platform is easy to update, too, instantly.”
Proweb helps to avoid customer disappointment by ensuring they can instantly view live vehicle availability and prices whilst enjoying real-time updates that require no manual adjustments. Customers can, therefore, book and pay at their convenience, helping to increase the number of bookings and ensuring that companies can keep up in a competitive market.
Tim highlights this last facet as particularly useful, “Another great feature when it comes to the booking process is the clear data you can rely on for prices and availability. The online process helps the customer save time and helps them to make informed and reliable decisions when they choose.”
Optimised pricing strategy
Proweb’s pricing strategy is just as simple and efficient. Its dynamic quoting system accounts for customer information, vehicle availability, market conditions and location, ensuring competitive pricing without sacrificing profitability.
Proweb allows vehicle rental companies to leverage the advanced rate card to provide personalised pricing. It also allows them to set predefined pricing and promotional offer rules automatically to ensure consistency. This dynamic pricing allows Proweb users to ensure their prices are adjusted effectively to keep up with their competition in these busy summer months.
Overall, the payment system has dramatically improved the Alleycat team’s efficiency. Tim tells us, “The Gateway payment system and Prohire app have reduced our check-in/out time by at least a third, so many customers comment on how efficient we are. This helps with staff costs and workload, too. All users find the system simple to learn and use day to day. It is a game changer.”
Conclusion
Proweb offers a dynamic and efficient solution to the drains of the manual booking process. It’s designed with the customer in mind, making it flexible and easy to use. For Tim and the Alleycat team, “The flexibility of the system allows us to store lots of different data that all users can rely on.”
With real-time availability updates, customisable parameters for pricing and offers, and end-to-end booking management, Proweb is Prohire Software’s solution that aids your business’s efficiency.
It’s our supportive team that enables our software solutions to shine. Tim shares that this is something Alleycat has experienced first-hand. “Something we always comment on is the speed and helpfulness of the support team when we need it. This is vital to a forward-looking company, having the support you can rely on allows you to push the ideas further especially when you have flexible software.”
Proweb is the perfect way to ensure your vehicle rental company remains competitive in such a fast-paced industry.
