Overview
One of the world’s leading major energy players is also a leader in the digital sphere.
Since 2016, TOTAL has leveraged Uberall CoreX to move the online presence of each of its 1,200 fuel and retail stations in Germany to new heights.
By partnering with Uberall, TOTAL actively manages all its listings and operational data, as well as social posts and reviews from one centralized location. Now, the global brand builds a memorable hybrid customer experience with accurate, up-to-date online information and memorable two-way conversations that have fueled offline sales.
The Challenge
TOTAL faced a two-pronged challenge. The first, to ensure hundreds of listings and online profiles were current, correct and consistent across dozens of platforms and directories. This also included optimising their online presence for its range of products, services and amenities.
So when prospective customers search for multiple ‘unbranded’ services, such as “car wash near me"; "gas station near me"; or “coffee shop near me”; and branded searches “TOTAL near me” in Google, they are connected to the closest location.
Once this data was optimised, the second challenge to solve was managing the reviews that came in across all the platforms and directories for each of their 1,200 locations in Germany.
The solution would need to ensure a two-way dialogue could be formed with the individual reviewer so that it would signal to other consumers that TOTAL cared about its customer feedback. The data from the reviews would also need to be collected in a way that it would be easy to analyse and at both the local and national level.
The Solution
Solution to Challenge I: Optimise Online Listings
How do you show up in local search to your customers looking for fuel or a spot to grab a bite? Bridging multiple services and offerings such as gas, food and groceries makes perfect sense for consumers looking for a one-stop-shop to refuel their empty tanks and their empty stomachs.
This, of course, starts with the address and operating hours, but it also goes much deeper: is there a cafe, a car wash? Do you sell cell phone chargers? Provide showers for truck drivers? It all depends on what information you want to provide the customers with in order to attract them to the station.
To solve TOTAL’s first challenge, the Uberall team implemented Listings for the location profiles of all its 1,200 locations across 50+ directories, enabling the team to update hundreds of online profiles within seconds.
Solution to Challenge II: Optimise Online Reputation
For the second part of the challenge, Uberall Engage was added, allowing TOTAL to monitor and respond to customer reviews on platforms such as Google, Facebook and Foursquare for hundreds of operators from one place.
With the Uberall platform, TOTAL manages reviews and distributes location data from a centralised platform, ensuring that anyone searching online would see all the customer interactions across the various platforms for each TOTAL location.
The Results
With accurate listings across dozens of platforms for hundreds of locations, TOTAL had a:
- 71% increase in phone calls
- 115% increase in views on Google Maps
The high quality of listings combined with a large number of reviews and a good average rating (or a rating that has continuously improved), give TOTAL an impressive visibility online.
On Google Maps, for example, data has shown that more and more people want to be navigated to a TOTAL station.
Listings management not only helps TOTAL improve the online visibility for its 1,200 locations across Germany, but accurate up-to-date information across the multiple platforms and directories also ensures a consistent customer brand experience online.
Through Uberall Reviews, TOTAL has a complete reputation management system in place. TOTAL is set up to easily monitor data across thousands of reviews to improve customer service, analyse customer feedback in detail and cross-check with programs, such as mystery shopping.
Now, when potential customers see a TOTAL station and a competitor's station in their search list, they very often make a decision based on the ratings. In fact, 88 percent of people say that they trust online reviews of a business just as much as they trust friends' recommendations.
Its 1,200 fuel stations are rated almost 10,000 times a month. The average rating is 4.2 stars. This gives TOTAL standout online visibility. And over the last 12 months, the ratings have improved further. Personal interactions, the central factor for the reputation of a brand were also boosted — with some the most frequent positive keywords in ratings at TOTAL being ‘friendly’, ‘personable’ and ‘nice.’
More than just allowing TOTAL to manage and monitor their listings and online reputation, the Uberall platform gives TOTAL Germany a consistent brand image and complete control of the hybrid customer journey.
