Staffing a rental store 24/7 would be wildly inefficient.
Even if you’re serving customers at all times of day or night, it’s usually on an ad-hoc basis. And, of course, the more you need to have staff present, your labor costs increase and/or your time to live life decreases.
Doug Haas from Crown Rental in Burnsville, Minn., knew there had to be a better way to maintain excellent accessibility while giving himself and his team more time to live the rest of their lives.
Working with Point of Rental Software and an automated locker manufacturer, he’s now able to shorten his Saturday hours, close on Sundays, and still provide secure pickups and dropoffs to his customers with rental lockers.
How do rental lockers work for dropoffs?
Here’s the guide Crown Rental shares with its customers. It’s very simple for customers to use.
But here’s how it works on Crown Rental’s side: First, they added Bluetooth padlocks with cables to their inventory. If a customer wants to return a large rental item that doesn’t fit inside a locker, they add a lock and cable to the rental contract in Point of Rental Elite, where they set the lock code. Anchor points within Crown Rental’s parking lot provide easy places for customers to secure equipment. Bluetooth functionality within each padlock tracks the time the unit was returned.
Crown Rental has locks available for rent within the lockers as well. This allows customers to change their minds and return items after hours, if necessary.
When an item is returned to the locker, the system automatically closes the contract. When the crew comes in the next business day, they inspect the items, bill for damages, and resolve any other issues like they would any other return.
How do rental lockers work for pickups?
Sometimes a renter needs to pick up an item after Crown Rental is closed. How can they pick up their rental items?
In a typical rental store, you could do a few different things:
- Ask if they can pick it up earlier, but adjust their rental period.
- Tell them they’re out of luck.
- Offer to deliver the item and hope they’re ok with a delivery fee (or eat delivery costs).
- Offer to stay late to make sure they get it – then hope the renter doesn’t work overtime that day (or forget about the rental or get stuck in traffic, or any number of things that lead to waiting around and missing out on things you’d rather be doing).
Doug has a better option: He uses Elite to write contracts, take payments, and collect digital signatures from a customer. Then he sets up the locker pickup in a separate platform, reserving a locker called “pre-arranged after-hours pickup”.
Customers scan their contract’s QR code when they arrive, knowing the item is in the assigned locker. For large items that don’t fit in a locker, they’ll get the code to unlock that piece of equipment (using Bluetooth padlocks). Again, opening the locker starts their rental period.
How’s it working for Crown Rental?
While he’s only been using the lockers for a few months, Doug says they’ve brought good results and happy customers. On the business side, it allowed him to give the team their weekends (mostly) off while serving customers’ needs.
Doug and the Crown Rental team continue to explore new ways to implement lockers and streamline the rental process. The next project on the horizon is adding 10’x10’ containers for those who need even bigger lockers.
If you’re looking to build a 24/7 rental business without staffing 24/7, rental lockers can be a valuable tool for achieving your goals.