Redesigning the Customer Experience | Fuel Retail

Project Brief

A leading fuel retailer in India engaged Turian Labs for an ethnographic study to gain an in-depth understanding about the determinants of its customers key behaviours and latent needs. The end goal of this study was to redesign the customer experience (CX) at its fuel stations, keeping in mind emerging realities and the evolving customer mindset.

Approach

Our research was built on Design Thinking methodology, which is based on a human-centered approach. This methodology allows us to gain deeper insights into user behaviours by understanding the underlying reasons for their actions.

As a first step, we undertook extensive desk research to decode the various aspects of the fuelling journey. This included identifying the different factors at play for a fuel retail business. This allowed us to map the current customer journey and generate a broader line of enquiry for stakeholder interactions. 

This study involved interactions with customers and other stakeholders, along with visits to various fuel stations across brands, for a more holistic understanding of the customer experience. 

Research was structured on 2 anchor areas: the ecosystem and point-of-sale-service.

• The focus on ecosystem enabled us to map the entire fuelling value chain, including touch-points involved,  influencers at play, and key players in the ecosystem.

• The focus on service helped us to understand how each touch-point plays a role in providing a superior customer experience.

We also spend time looking into the parallel world to identify similarities in needs & expectations from a customer experience perspective. This helped us to understand the customer journey, and generate hypotheses to be tested out with the customers during in-depth interactions. 

Stakeholder interactions

Key stakeholders for this study were customers across the metro/Tier 1 and Tier 2 locations in India. Apart from understanding the current customer journey to map the fuelling experience, the discussion also focused on their lifestyle preferences and digital behaviour.

Interactions followed the ‘emic’ method of ethnographic research. This methodology allows us to understand the mental model of a respondent and how they behave in a given context. This was coupled with interactive activities like card sorting, sketching, etc. Together, these methods enabled us to validate/reject what respondents articulated, along with understanding the finer nuances of their action. 

Apart from the interactions with customers, it was equally important to understand the service provider’s perspective: this included the staff at the fuelling stations and key decision makers from the company. 

A common theme across these interactions was our focus on deciphering the premise of customer experience, both from the service providers and customer's perspective, along with understanding the mental models at play. 

Co-creation with customers

Staying true to the philosophy that ‘the customer knows best’, we conducted a series of co-creation workshops with customers across demographics at each research locations. These workshops included co-creative and generative exercises, which allowed participants to co-create potential solutions and services revolving around the fuelling experience. 

Key Discoveries and Client Impact

The final output of this study included core areas which play a critical role in defining the customer experience. Prior to the study, there were a lot of disparate initiatives by the company and the ecosystem at large about the evolution of customer needs with regards to fuelling. This is where target personae, outlining the inherent behaviour and key decision-making pivots, played a role. We were able to create a service blueprint stitching together the above initiatives with core customer needs. 

In summary, the key to decoding customer experiences in a fuelling journey is to recognise that at the core, it is a retail play.