Sixt Partners With Yext for Online Visibility and Reputation Management

From gigantic airport installations to social media content targeting Gen Z, Sixt Autovermietung experiments with creativity and humor — and new technology. The company from Pullach was one of the first German companies on Snapchat. More recently, the company launched the world's first comprehensive mobility platform in an app that connects digital car rental, car sharing, and ride-hailing for 20 million customers. This pioneering spirit has helped the family business grow by leaps and bounds: in 1912, Sixt launched a fleet of three cars in Germany; today it is the largest car rental company in Europe with 2018 revenue reaching €2.93 billion. Sixt has roughly 270,000 vehicles worldwide across 2,200 locations in more than 100 countries.

In February 2017, Sixt sought a strategic partner with three goals in mind: increasing the visibility of the brand and its individual rental locations, optimizing data and information across digital platforms, and monitoring and responding to online reviews in real time.

With Yext, Sixt is in control of its data and information across more than 100 platforms, including Google, Amazon Alexa, Apple Maps, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp. Information for 1,312 owned and 400 franchise locations is managed from a single point of control with Yext, ensuring contact details, operating hours, and other essential details are always up to date, accurate, and consistent no matter where customers are searching. "We look at all publisher suggestions and test and use new features," says Thorsten Becker, Head of SEO at Sixt.

Yext empowers Sixt to deliver a seamless customer experience across services and from online to offline. This includes responding to reviews and analyzing them for actionable insights to improve service at the location level. Yext provides Sixt with a detailed overview of reviews and locations at a glance. "We see it as our task to stand by our customers and to offer them a comprehensive service by taking their opinions seriously and dealing with them," says Becker. Internally, Sixt has aligned these important tasks with its SEO and Customer Care teams, who work closely with Yext. "At Sixt we understand that the customer is king. They make their own decisions and rate products and services according to their satisfaction," says Becker. "The more we learn, the more expectations they have, the better we can be prepared for it."

In close cooperation with Yext, Sixt successfully manages the customer experience and continuously optimizes it. "The benefit and added value of customer reviews for us is that we can communicate with customers candidly and honestly. In direct dialogue, we can work in real time to make our services and products on the web even more transparent and thus make us more tangible on the whole," says Thorsten Becker. To do this, he uses various custom dashboards in Yext, each prepared to display specific KPIs at a glance, such as star ratings by location.

This investment is paying off. "We have improved our visibility and can update and monitor the data and information about our locations," says Becker. "This gives us more control over our brand online." Within six months of launch, Yext analyzed 18,000 reviews. In addition, Sixt has since seen an increase in Google Customer Actions by 29% over the previous year.

"We are pleased to count Sixt among our customers," says Michael Hartwig, Managing Partner of Central Europe at Yext. "Sixt is known for trying new things, driving innovation, and tackling new topics. The integration of Yext shows that Sixt wants to further expand its pioneering role in the digital sector. We look forward to accompanying this development by ensuring that off-site data is maintained on more than 100 digital platforms and significantly impacting online presence."

Through local business listings, Sixt controls its data and information across over 100 platforms — including Google, Amazon Alexa, Apple Maps, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp. Within 6 months of launching with Yext, 1,312 owned and 400 franchise locations have been integrated there.

18,000 reviews were analyzed within first 6 months with Yext.

In the first 6 months with Yext, Sixt has seen an increase of 29% in Google Customer Actions over the previous year — including clicks, calls, and card calls.