Building the Hybrid Customer Experience: The BP Story

Hi I'm Andy Duggan. I work in bp and I work within the bp retail function. My job is Global Digital Marketing Specialists at bp. And we look at how to become more relevant to the customer in the future as the needs of the market changes.

Well if you look at society we become more saturated into smaller spaces. So people want the answer closest to them. So everything's become me and my community. So near me searches is just the current evolution of the internet. Everyone wants to know where the nearest service is but also which one is most relevant to them. A lot of people say bp is competitors shell as so a like to like petrol stations. But if I'm also offering coffee as a service within my store one I want to make sure the product is good but I want to make sure the people looking for our product are also aware of our brand to choose from. So then it puts us up against the likes of McDonald's, Starbucks, Costa coffee and that's where I'd like to dominate. I think as max we can all agree that the customer or the audience ultimately wants to ask itself am I valued by trading with that business. From a global brand point of view the advantage is now understanding do we offer consumer value at a store level and we are looking at that and saying does our brand live up to that brand promise at every single location.

In terms of building the business at a local level it's about are we going that bit further are we answering our google reviews. A lot of global brands, a lot of country brands don't bother to do that and it's a massive opportunity. Why don't brands want to listen to customers? Why don't they rather respond? From my point of view that's the first thing I want to do from a near me search point of view - answer the reviews, listen, take that feedback and optimize our business accordingly.

We worked with Uberall for a number of years now and what we've been doing is focusing on the basics, getting the basics in place. So some of the basics has been making sure the pin on a map is on the center of the petrol station. Why is that? Because we don't want to be navigating people across the road. We don't want them stopping in the highway. We want them directly on the driving towards the middle of our petrol stations where our petrol pumps are. That gets our customers to a safe environment. They can pull in. They can take a rest. They can look for what we have in our store or our program services. Audiences are looking for your brand your product and services right now. The longer you leave it the more you're going to miss out on the opportunities.

So it's best to focus on the basics which is your brand, your branding, the geolocation of your locations, your telephone number and web address. Start with those basics then you've got your footprint in order. In time you can use the technology that Uberall provides to build out additional information and within the Uberall platform it does actually say what percentage of your data is complete.

Everyone talks about digital transformation, but it's not. It's about digital adoption. Are we utilizing the full services that Uberall has to offer? And I like to say bp retail is in a place where we utilize the technology, but we fully utilize it as best as we can in a number of countries as many countries as we can and that's the real difference. Technology exists in market but a lot of brands don't fully utilize it.