EmCan Loyalty • EmCan “perfect customer” • Main goal and motivation behind the launch of the EmCan • EmCan solution provider, technologies used and key features • EmCan program structure, tiers and benefits • Which personalisation, gamification, or other CX features you have implemented?
GLO
0:00: EmCan Loyalty program introduction
1:46: Can you describe your “perfect customer”? What is their profile?
2:43: What was the main goal and motivation behind the launch of the EmCan loyalty program?
4:28: Launching EmCan: EmCan solution provider and technologies used and key features you were looking for?
6:37: EmCan program structure, tiers and benefits
8:58: Which personalisation, gamification, or other CX features have you implemented?
Read the interveiw:
0:00 EmCan Loyalty program introduction
Mr. Ali Bin Zayed: My name is Ali Bin Zayed, I’m senior manager of corporate loyalty at Emirates General Petroleum Corporation (Emarat), UAE. I’m also handling marketing and innovation. We take great privilege in Emarat being established in 1981 by the rulers of the country. From that year onwards, we have been excelling in CX and customer service across Dubai and Northern Emirates. We kept it as a pillar to give the best customer experience to all of our customers in every location, focusing on customer and operational excellence, especially when it comes to our service stations – whether it’s on the forecourt, convenience stores, our carwash or even car registration.
We can say that after 22 years, we established a new channel for customer experience, EmCan. Emcan represents Emarat. Its name and means “Emarat Can”. So “Emarat Can” give you the best customer experience, and best service, and can give you the best customer loyalty program.
Given our country and the diversity of the United Arab Emirates, we wanted to have a name that everyone can relate to. In Arabic EmCan means possibilities – so our tagline is inspired by that, which is “limitless possibilities”. We always give our customers limitless possibilities within our loyalty program.
1:46 GLO: Can you describe your “perfect customer”? What is their profile?
Mr. Ali Bin Zayed: For Emarat anyone that comes is a “perfect customer”. However, from a business perspective, when we look at the perfect customer – it is an active customer, who comes 1-3 times a week, fuels, goes through all our services, goes to the convenience store, goes to the bakery for a quick grab of healthy food or even a nice sandwich, cup of coffee, and then towards the end of the week, washes the car, changes the lube of the car or the oil in the engine. So, for us, a customer that goes within all of our services from a business perspective is a perfect customer. But all the customers in our eyes are perfect.
2:43 GLO: What was the main goal and motivation behind the launch of the EmCan loyalty program?
Mr. Ali Bin Zayed: Our market is demanding as competitors have already launched their programs before us. We were pressured and challenged by our staff and our management to do something that would ‘wow’ everyone. We have partnered with our consultant SIA Partners to create a full strong business model behind it. We established it towards the end of 2021 – it took us a couple of months to perfect the customer personas, and customer journey, making sure that what we give to our customers is close to perfect. In June 2022 we kicked off the project. We had a lot of workshop sessions, and GAP analysis done to perfect the app.
We catered even to the smallest detail of the smallest icons to make it seamless for the customer when visiting the station, making the experience as seamless as possible. Within 6 months we created our MVP (minimum viable product) before commercialising it. We had to make sure that we have 4 months with all our colleagues to test the application thoroughly daily for constant feedback. And any idea that could surface, we would tackle it immediately.
4:28 Launching EmCan: EmCan solution provider and technologies used and key features you were looking for?
Mr. Ali Bin Zayed: When we started the program in the previous phase called Phase Zero, we wanted the best-in-class CRM in loyalty. Given the ambition and vision we had from the management, we wanted to uplift the systems also within our company. We have opted for the best-in-class CRM in the world, which is Salesforce. They have been extremely supportive of us. We wanted the full ecosystem integrated for the customer, we wanted to have the best service for our best customers. We are we take great privilege of being one of the first customers of Salesforce to use the loyalty engine, and we have had huge support from them. We wanted to give the customer a full ecosystem. So what Salesforce gave us is a CRM with a lot of futuristic features to forecast the behaviour of the customers, to create different segments linked to the loyalty engine within the same platform, as well as the sales cloud and the marketing cloud. Basically, imagine having a V12 engine for your loyalty program. I think this is what our customers deserve and utilizing it makes us more agile – we can build whatever we want on it. The strength of such platforms allows us to go above and beyond. Even if you want to have specialized and personalized content for the customer, which we are doing, we can easily do that now, since we have such a powerful core.
6:37: EmCan program structure, tiers and benefits
Mr. Ali Bin Zayed: When it comes to the earnings structure of the program, we kept it open since we just launched. We have a point system with a fixed structure because we have fueling, we have our convenience store, our bakery, our car wash and car registration and we are expanding within our internal business units as well.
Our points constantly change. How do we achieve that? We have different offers at different times of the year. Currently, we offer 4x on fuel (up until June 30th, 2023). We want to give people at different times different offers. What might come next is 10 times the offer at a certain time. The overall structure is very clear and easy for the customer to earn per litre of fuel and at the convenience store it’s per AED spent.
The tier system will be onboarded very soon – we want to give our customers something that’s worth their while. So, we will onboard green, silver and gold for our most loyal customers and frequent customers. Once they reach silver and gold, they will have offers outside of the ecosystem like gym membership, discount cards that they prefer plus they will have free car wash, free cup of coffee and similar promotions. We have specific in our application promotions that they can get access.
As we have a powerful loyalty engine, we can utilize customer personas and segments and customers will have a personalized offering. If he’s a coffee lover – he will have something specifically made for him if he washes his car a lot. Lastly, of course, general promotions would be available for everyone.
8:58 Which personalisation, gamification, or other CX features have you implemented?
Mr. Ali Bin Zayed: Personalised campaigns will be onboarded very soon. Since we started, we needed a “data period”. We needed to understand the customer, plug them in and understand their behaviour. We already have an amazing set of data and we have identified for example “Redbull lovers” around Dubai airport and using such data we are developing promotions.
We also have recently launched the Emarat millionaire campaign, meaning one lucky EmCan customer will receive 1 million AED in cash. Just go on the EmCan app, scan your QR code and you’re automatically onboarded on the ruffle. We are the first in our market to ever do such a raffle and we take great pride in that. So, no more putting your name on a coupon, and losing it as your coupon is digitised and now you get it instantly.
Source: GLO / Emarat
