SITE OF THE FUTURE
Making each forecourt visit a memorable experience
Quick Facts
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Background
A British multinational oil and gas company wanted to understand use cases for a transformed forecourt experience - particularly a future food offering - and how this would align with their evolving customers needs. Research and recommendations were delivered to provide a strategy on how they could deliver this new experience.
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Skill Areas
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User Research
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Research synthesis
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Market Research & trend analysis
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Ideation
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Concept sketching
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Stakeholder management
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Innovative thinking
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Collaboration
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Output
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Jobs to be done (JTBD)
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Consolidated outputs of ideation sessions
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Customer matrix based on research to categorise the needs of their customer groups.
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Detailed recommendations report on food offering ideas and how they could be executed.
The Details
THE PROBLEM
With the rise in electric vehicles, a British multinational oil and gas company wanted to understand use cases for a transformed forecourt experience and how this would align with their evolving customer needs.
For a long time, this company saw a large portion of their profits come from customer use of their petrol and diesel filling stations. With the rise of electric vehicles and evolving customer needs they decided that they wanted to transform the forecourt experience so that it was more than just a filling station. They required exploration for the most valuable services they could offer and a clear strategy for execution.
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The team and I worked with the client to understand their various customers' needs, validate their business requirements, ideate transformative offerings based on market research and prioritise ideas based of customer value.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
12-week project, 2022
MAKE OF THE TEAM
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Strategy Lead
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User Researcher
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Service Design Lead
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Business Analyst
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Service Design & Research associate
KEY GOAL
Deliver recommendations that details the direction for a transformed forecourt experience.
MY ROLE
I was the Service Design and Research associate tasked with taking a deeper dive into a potential food offering as part of the transformative forecourt experience, mapping out what the new experience would look like for customers and highlighting opportunities.
I worked closely with the team's User Researcher as they had gathered insights on the client's customer groups and their needs when making a journey to service stations. Research synthesis was interrogated to understand the type of users that would see value in a food offering in the forecourt and the type of experiences they'd expect based on customers 'Jobs to be Done'.
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I also connected with relevant stakeholders to understand business ambitions for a transformative food offering. This context along with user insights informed a number of ideation sessions which I led with stakeholders where food offerings in the market were evaluated and prioritised using a bespoke customer research matrix.
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Following the ideation session's outputs, use cases for the most valuable food offerings were mapped out and all outputs were consolidated into an informative pack that detailed an executive summary, our approach, user needs, food offering concepts, use cases and highlighted opportunities for our client to implement.
UNDERSTANDING THE CUSTOMER
It was important for us to understand the motivations, behaviours and needs of customers to inform a valuable forecourt experience.
The client had provided a set of customer personas that segmented their customers into groups. The first thing the team was keen to confirm was the validity of these personas and whether any needs had changed since this research was first done. Insights gathered by the team's User Researcher confirmed that the customer segmentation remained true but their needs for a transformed forecourt hadn't been explored.
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I worked with the User Researcher to include questions that were specific to their food offering needs in the discussion guide. We learned that the customers who visited service stations as a stop off from long journeys - mainly motorway drivers - wanted an offering that allowed them to leave their vehicles and take rest in a different setting, while customers that hadn't had a long journey and only visited the forecourt to refill their vehicles wanted a food offering that allowed them to stay in their cars.
Consolidating the needs of all our customers confirmed that we needed a food offering that catered to an indoor and drive-thru type experience.
Meet Thomas
Personas were used to segment Customers needs, behaviours and pain points.
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Thomas is an example persona of the many developed within this project. Some of his behaviours to call out are:
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He's an electric vehicle customer that drives everyday including family trips around the UK
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He is tech savvy and plans his journey before making his way to a service station
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He often stays in the car with family while it's charging
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Some of these behaviours mean that his key needs include - service stations that are conveniently located, reliable and safe as well as food offerings that can be accessed quickly to feed his kids during journeys.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
A decision-making framework was used to keep everyone aligned with choices that were clear, appealing and tailored to the client's vision.
As a team we began with understanding our client's objectives, motivations and work that had already been completed. For this client, their focus was transforming the forecourt experience for customers visiting their service stations as they want to get ahead with other revenue-generating offers, particularly around food, with the rise in electric vehicles. We did this through a series of stakeholder meetings. We then did a deep-dive into customer groups and research led by our team researcher which provided evidence to what their customers need and how this aligns with the business vision.
I then led the market research and trend analysis by researching emerging food experience trends that aligned with the client's goals. A benchmarking exercise was carried out by looking at what similar businesses were doing as communicated in their yearly reports and this was used to identify opportunities for differentiation.
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Following this, I created 10 initial concepts that detailed the offering and how it aligned with customer and business needs. These offerings went through a round of elimination within the internal team and once we had decided on our strongest 5 options, I worked with the senior service designer to confirm the agenda for a series of client ideation sessions.
I facilitated a number of ideation sessions with stakeholders providing more context to the concepts we had and providing a space for them to interrogate ideas and develop them further. I synthesised the outputs of these sessions and use cases for prioritised ideas were mapped along with the next steps needed to make this offering work practically.
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It was important for us to collaborate regularly as a team to ensure that we provided well-rounded concepts that were backed by evidence and aligned with both business and customer needs.
SOME OF THE KEY POINTS THAT LED TO THIS PROJECT'S SUCCESS:
Challenging clients on their customers is okay!
The client provided customer personas that were previously created and believed this was a complete picture of their customers. To cut costs they didn't want us to initially do any more research but this was challenged and research delivered more insights than what was originally captured.
Initial examples in ideation sessions encourages creativity
Encouraging creativity can be difficult for some in ideation sessions. Providing some initial ideas to clients is a great way to get them thinking on what actually could work and sparks more conversations/thoughts.
Regular touch points with stakeholders is crucial
Senior stakeholders are always very busy, juggling many things at once. It is important to have check ins with them on progress and continuously check this aligns with their expectations.
Documenting decisions always serves as a reminder
It's always better to assume that clients may forget decisions that have been made - even it has been made in a dedicated playback. Always have decisions documented in a follow up email so this can be referred to when there is a break in communication.
Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate!
Sounds like it's just a buzzword but the value of collaboration cannot be emphasised enough! Stay close to your team to soundboard ideas, check that ideas are aligning with insights and work they've developed and come together to solve problems. You'll get to a solution together faster.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LESSONS LEARNED
As a Service Design and research associate I worked closely with a Service Design Lead and a Lead User Researcher. Both team members equipped me with learnings that I went on to take onto other projects where I had a more leading role.
This project had a quick turnaround so working to provide value quickly was essential. It was clear from the start that this piece of work would spearhead more work in actually delivering our proposed concepts so it was important to be proactive - work with the client to lay the necessary groundwork so that ideas could be implemented.
Another key learning was keeping stakeholders aligned and managing expectations. Stakeholders had different ideas on what the transformed forecourt experience could look like and they had very different personalities. It was key for the team and I to manage these differences by confirming early on the best way each stakeholder wanted to be communicated and managing group sessions efficiently. Where necessary ideas were 'parked' for later and revisited to maintain valuable conversations.
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Overall, this project was enjoyable because it provided the freedom for innovative thinking while working with the client to outline how ideas could come to life and provide value to customers.