Fuelling discontent

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

I imagine there are some people who actually enjoy buying petrol.  You may even be  one of them.   Most  people are probably indifferent, but for me it’s a banal and joyless experience.  Not as bad as completing  a tax return and way better than root canal, but joyless none the less. 

Perhaps the origin of this lies in some past, forecourt -related trauma.  Perhaps I have a particular dislike of getting diesel on my soles.  But  whatever the cause, the problem definitely got worse for me once petrol stations decided to  “maximise their site’s retail potential”.  Now fan belts, oil  and other motoring essentials fight for space with barbeques,  pies and latte.  The net effect is to make the whole process  even longer.  In many garages the increased transaction time ensures vehicles are stuck at the pump.  And at a well-known garage on the A3 this frequently leads to tail-backs on to the main road.  In my own case I’ve been known  to drive with the gauge in the red in the hope  I’ll  come across an old -school filling station, that just sells fuel.  By the time I find one, the car’s usually on vapour, which makes for quite a lucrative petrol-only sale.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with trying to sell related products and services.  Done well it provides the customer with additional benefits and it helps boost profits.  But this illustration demonstrates some of the risks.   It shouldn’t be detrimental to the original service and it definitely shouldn’t jeopardise the relationship.

At AchieveGlobal we’re often asked to help by giving service providers the skills to sell,  either in business to business or business to consumer environments.  One of the biggest challenges can be that the individual service people are concerned at the prospect of  selling  - often because they’ve experienced it being done badly.  When they see how the skills can actually improve customer attitudes, they become much more positive.

Speaking of positive experiences, recently I was getting my passport application pre-checked at the Post Office (not an AchieveGlobal customer).   The clerk asked when I was travelling and offered travel insurance and  currency.  Perhaps others wouldn’t have liked this approach, but my response was positive.  They met all the golden rules, being friendly, relevant and targeted to me. 

There are many organisations who could learn from this.  And for some of them,  here’s today’s free consulting tip:   Can we please have a fuel only queue,  or as a compromise,  a line for three items or fewer?