Replatforming a customer loyalty program to drive engagement and loyalty

Understanding customer motivations and program challenges  

Our client recognized two main obstacles in its pursuit of earning UK market share. 

For many customers, fuel is deemed as a necessary commodity—a buying-decision that’s driven by convenience and affordability, with less regard to which brand they’re purchasing from. Given these buying motives, it was a challenge, and opportunity, for our client to rethink how to inspire motorists to choose one brand over another, especially when competitors were actively working to earn brand loyalty in the same market. 

Our client knew that to increase customer awareness and engagement with the program, its customer proposition needed to be more relevant and compelling. Their team also needed to consider how to continually grow the program, personalize the customer experience and stand out among the competition.  

The ideal solution would improve the brand’s data analytics to enable a personalized, real-time customer experience throughout the redemption process.

Fueling loyalty through mobile engagement

Streamlining the customer redemption experience with a necessary replatforming was at the heart of the strategy. 

The program had been based on earning points for gallons of fuel purchased—offering the best value in the market—but points could only be redeemed through paper vouchers. It was an inconvenient process for both customers and staff, resulting in relatively low engagement. 

We helped our client develop a contactless, mobile-first strategy that allowed customers to avoid swiping a physical card. Instead, customers could download and add a digital card to their device wallet, allowing them to ‘tap’ and pay at the point-of-sale terminal. Customers instantly earned points and were able to redeem their digital fuel vouchers on the spot. 

Our team worked with our client’s chosen mobile app developer to enable personalized in-app content and push notifications, which set the foundation for a seamless, real-time customer experience. This transitioned all data management and insights to our customer service platform, Horizon. 

Once the platform transition was in place, we leveraged data to maximize customer engagement and increase sales. Our team used a combination of geospatial location data, behavioral analytics and RFM modeling to create a comprehensive customer relationship management plan that encouraged app downloads and drove personalized offers. 

The program continues to evolve

Future program developments include empowering service station owners and operators to deliver their own local offers with the help of Horizon platform tools.