Fueling Loyalty: Insights from Shell’s Go+ Team on Engagement, Strategy & the Future of Loyalty (#735)

Jakub: So whether you are and engage with the program in Europe, in Asia or in North America, the experience, the field that we want to provide to you is distinct to Shell.

Jakub: It’s rewarding, it’s trusted, and it’s easy to use.

Jakub: When you work with so many different markets, it’s really in practice to ensure that you have a unified vision.

Jakub: You think about Shell, right?

Jakub: It’s one of the largest retail network in the world with like 46,000 stations, and we are operating loyalty program in more than 25 markets across three regions.

Jonathan: We made a major resolution in the program last year.

Jonathan: So we moved from an older model to a new base model that was points-based, refreshed pretty much every aspect of the program.

Jonathan: Can we make things more relevant?

Jonathan: And can we decide at a per-customer level the right amount to invest?

Jonathan: And if you look at some of the things we’re doing around that, some of it’s working, some of it, you know, we’re still on a learning journey, but there’s a lot of potential there that I think we can unlock.

Paula: Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Charlie Hills, Chief Strategy Officer of Mando, a UK based agency that uses smart data to create brilliant partnerships and rewards that really work.

Charlie: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Charlie: As Paula mentioned, I’m Charlie Hills, the Chief Strategy Officer for Mando.

Charlie: In this episode, I’m delighted to interview Kuba and John from the global and UK Shell Go Plus teams.

Charlie: Kuba is the Europe and North America Loyalty and CRM Lead at Shell, where he’s been driving customer engagement and commercial value since joining in 2021.

Charlie: Prior to joining Shell, he spearheaded the end-to-end design and launch of the Footlocker membership program in Europe.

Charlie: Kuba is a firm believer in the power of building meaningful emotional relationships with customers to ensure the long-term success and value of loyalty programs.

Charlie: John is the Head of Loyalty and CRM for Shell UK.

Charlie: He’s been in the industry for all his career working across big and small companies, his agency and client side, including brands like Shell and Vodafone, and sectors including financial services, home energy, retail and banking.

Charlie: Today, we’re going to be learning all about their favorite books, highlights and key learnings from the programs they’ve worked on, and all about what loyalty looks like now and in the future for Shell.

Charlie: I really hope you enjoy our conversation today.

Charlie: I’m so pleased to have you both on the episode today.

Charlie: What a treat to have two such brilliant guests.

Charlie: Welcome to the show.

Jakub: Hey, Charlie.

Jakub: Very glad to be here.

Jakub: Thank you for having us.

Charlie: Brilliant.

Jonathan: Thanks for having us, Charlie.

Jonathan: Great to be here.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Charlie: It’s going to be a really good one.

Charlie: What a pleasure to have a representative of the Global Shell team and also the UK Shell team on the call.

Charlie: That’s great.

Charlie: We’ve got Kuba from the Global Team and John from the UK Team.

Charlie: It should be a really, really good episode.

Charlie: Before we get into all the brilliant details about Shell Go+, I’m going to open with our favorite question because we’re building quite the library recommendation for Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Charlie: Kuba, I’ll ask you first, what is your favorite book about life, leadership or loyalty?

Jakub: The book that already resonates with me is actually called Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erickson.

Jakub: It is a book I received from a former colleague of mine after starting to work in the international environment.

Jakub: Because this book really talks about the different types of personalities using the disk system, and really how important is the communication with different people in a different way and form.

Jakub: It’s really untax the importance of not only looking at the communication from your own perspective, but also trying to understand the other people that you’re communicating with.

Jakub: It really talks about the self-awareness, the understanding of the other profiles, and really how as in a business and as a leader, it’s always about the other people that you need to learn how to listen and also not only about how you like to be spoken to, but also how the people that you speak to actually like to be communicated.

Jakub: When I think about this book right now, I actually think it really resonates as well with the loyalty aspect, because there’s no such thing as an average customer.

Jakub: Really, every customer likes to be communicated differently.

Jakub: They expect different things.

Jakub: So I think this book also helps me in a day-to-day business and really how we talk about the communication, the loyalty space.

Charlie: That’s a brilliant recommendation.

Charlie: I think you’re the first person to talk about that book, so I’m sure everyone’s going to be downloading it now.

Charlie: What about you, John?

Jonathan: My favorite book actually changes a lot.

Jonathan: So I’m going to zoom in on a book that I’m close to finishing at the moment, which is Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

Jonathan: She was a former professional poker player.

Jonathan: She really talks about how all decisions that we make are ultimately that’s based on imperfect data.

Jonathan: I think for me, it resonates a lot with the world of loyalty, where you can do incredibly sophisticated business cases.

Jonathan: But ultimately, you’re feeding in assumptions and ideas and thoughts about how customers are going to behave, which is really a bet and you just have to take controlled bets all the time across a whole range of different things.

Jonathan: So she’s very good at explaining that architecture in terms of how you make decisions, which I think is great.

Jonathan: The other thing that she brings out really well, I think is this whole notion of looking back and forward in time on decisions.

Jonathan: One of the things that we’ve used actually before I read the book was this whole notion of pre-mortems where if you’re doing a huge, whether it’s a huge launch or anything else that you’re doing, really listing out in detail all the things that can go wrong and preparing fully in advance.

Jonathan: So I think it’s a very interesting read coming from a different perspective.

Charlie: Yeah, that’s really cool.

Charlie: And that nice, again, the application to personal life, but also professional life.

Charlie: We’re getting that in a lot of the recommendations actually, that those business books are going that way.

Charlie: And then I get quite a few guests who come on as well.

Charlie: And they talk about a more personal, non-work related book and then how it applies as well.

Charlie: So those are two really great recommendations.

Charlie: Thank you for sharing.

Charlie: What about loyalty programs that you like?

Charlie: Let’s start with you, Kuba.

Charlie: What’s your favorite loyalty program at the moment and why?

Jakub: Yeah, so besides, of course, Shell Go Plus that we have, my favorite ones are Nike Membership and Sephora Beauty Insider.

Jakub: And I’m part of the Nike membership.

Jakub: I’m not part of Sephora, but I think the reason why I kind of look up into those programs is because they really look at the loyalty from a different angle.

Jakub: They both focus on the meaningful experience that the brand deliver to the customers, and they really go beyond just a simple transactional benefits.

Jakub: Especially Nike, I mean, they really focus on the community building and really in the fashion industry, it’s really important to make sure that you deliver a story to your audience.

Jakub: It’s not about just a simple message.

Jakub: It’s not about the communication.

Jakub: It’s actually the story building around the products that they have.

Jakub: And what really, I mean, with those two brands and those two programs is really that, the exclusivity that comes with being their member.

Jakub: You know, Sneaker, Nike has this thing called a Sneaker Day, which really brings customers closer to the sneaker community.

Jakub: There’s an exclusive event, but also as a user of the app, you can actually get access to behind the scenes content and really can understand the logic, the thinking behind some of the collaboration that came to life.

Jakub: So I think those programs really show how to really evolve the standard loyalty program that we have elsewhere.

Charlie: That’s really nice.

Charlie: And for those of you that don’t have the privilege of knowing Kuba, you’ll know he’s an absolute sneaker guru.

Charlie: And if we weren’t on a professional recording at the moment, I’d get him to put his foot up on the screen because I can guarantee he’s wearing an absolutely amazing pair today.

Charlie: What about you, John?

Charlie: What are your favorite programs?

Charlie: Anything to do with shoes?

Jonathan: Well, probably enough, no.

Jonathan: But being UK based, I think you always have to mention the big three.

Jonathan: So Kiboot, Nectar.

Jonathan: What I like about them is not only the scale, but how deeply embedded they are within those businesses.

Jonathan: And I think the teams have done a great job in terms of that scale and embedding.

Jonathan: I think the other one that all stands out for me as well, I’ve always been a big fan of it, is Vitality.

Jonathan: I think the way that they both have the partnerships and the way that they nudge behavior to align with their outcomes is a tremendous program.

Jonathan: Again, I think the team has done a fantastic job of that.

Charlie: Yeah, those are brilliant examples.

Charlie: And I think Vitality comes up a lot actually, that concept of brand-appropriate reward for brand-appropriate behavior makes it such a popular program professionally.

Charlie: Personally, people just really like sort of the sausage dog and the Apple watch as well.

Charlie: So I think it’s really nice that it’s got that balance of like really smart kind of loyalty behavioral science and nudges and rewards and partnerships built onto it.

Charlie: And then they also kind of remember to make people smile, which is really nice.

Charlie: They recently did a very cute little game where you could find the dachshund.

Charlie: And that was a really sweet example actually of a word of emotion within like a really kind of cleverly built program.

Charlie: So yeah, those are excellent case studies.

Charlie: Everyone go check them out.

Charlie: We’ll stick them in the show notes.

Charlie: What about your backgrounds in loyalty and what you enjoy about working in loyalty marketing?

Charlie: Kubil will start again with you, although I feel like John’s getting a head start on this because he gets to think about every question whilst he tries to steal some of the things he might want to say in your answer to, you know, make it a bit harder for him.

Charlie: But yeah, what about your background in loyalty marketing?

Charlie: Why you like it?

Jakub: Yeah, no.

Jakub: So, I’ll tell you about 12 years ago when I joined Payback Coalition Program in Poland as a business consultant.

Jakub: And actually, funny enough, when I joined Payback, at the start, I didn’t realize it was actually all about loyalty.

Jakub: I thought it would be more going towards like finance, payment, essentially like PayPal type of thing.

Jakub: But actually, when I joined the company, I had no knowledge of loyalty.

Jakub: I didn’t know what it is.

Jakub: So actually, it was a very steep learning curve for me.

Jakub: But during that time, I really had a chance to work on multiple different projects and brands and we gave the first insights into the customer loyalty, the first party data, the importance of customer segmentations.

Jakub: After that, I joined the Footlocker.

Jakub: So as you already mentioned, this was the time where I grew my passion for sneakers.

Jakub: And within the first three months, I think I got from like a few pairs to like more than 20, 30 pairs of sneakers.

Jakub: So it was really, yeah, the brand itself had a big impact on myself.

Jakub: And also, you know, being responsible for launching their first European loyalty program called FLS Membership was a big part of this.

Jakub: And really that opened up the way I look at the loyalty and really going into that emotional experience base is really building that long term relationship with the customers.

Jakub: I think those two years at Footlocker really shaped how I kind of view loyalty at this stage.

Jakub: And then back in 2021, I started as a Loyalty and CRM leader at Shell.

Jakub: So I started supporting the North America markets in driving customer engagement.

Jakub: And then since last year, I also expanded my role to the European markets.

Jakub: So I worked very closely on with John.

Jakub: But yeah, what I love about the loyalty marketing, I think for me is really continuously learning curve.

Jakub: I mean, the learning never stops.

Jakub: The loyalty programs do change.

Jakub: I mean, what drives customer today will not drive them two days from now.

Jakub: So it’s really important to make sure that we continuously educate ourselves and test new things in the market.

Jakub: And since there’s no such thing as an average customer, I mean, we continuously need to find ways where it’s a small program or a big program to really give customers this feeling of a local store, a store where when you enter, the seller actually knows you.

Jakub: They choose you by your name.

Jakub: They know what you want to buy.

Jakub: And for us, I mean, through loyalty, we can do that, even though the base is a few million customers, with the data that we have access to, you still can deliver that feeling and the emotions.

Jakub: I think that’s what’s really been driving me with loyalty marketing.

Charlie: It’s really nice and it’s great to hear that from a mega brand like Shell, you know, a lot of brands talk about having millions of customers, but you guys really mean it.

Charlie: You know, the global footprint is huge.

Charlie: What about you, John?

Charlie: I know you’ve worked in lots of sectors and lots of kind of very recognizable brands.

Charlie: What are your favorite things and what’s your sort of background in loyalty marketing?

Jonathan: Yeah, thanks, Charlie.

Jonathan: I mean, I’ve spent a lot.

Jonathan: I pretty much spent my entire career in some sort of data driven marketing space.

Jonathan: I actually started at Vodafone in a CRM role and have moved on to lots of different companies and lots of different things from there.

Jonathan: But, you know, the common thread has been some sort of loyalty CRM or related anchor throughout everything that I’ve done.

Jonathan: I’ve been on the client side and I’ve been, you know, agency side, financial services, retail, home energy.

Jonathan: I’m trying to think.

Jonathan: I think I’ve been in most sectors, actually, along the way.

Charlie: Quite the list.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Jonathan: But the thing that always interests me about this space and the reason why I’ve already done it for so long is it always comes across having the perfect blend of so many different things.

Jonathan: You know, you’ve got data science, you’ve got behavioral science, there’s a strong element, of course, of commerciality.

Jonathan: There’s an aspect of design, there’s an aspect of product management, there’s technology, there’s, it’s kind of like everything combined into one area.

Jonathan: So that’s what I find so interesting.

Jonathan: You know, one day you could be having a conversation about an incredibly complex technology issue.

Jonathan: And then the next moment, you’re talking about some sort of wonderful creative that we’re planning.

Jonathan: So it’s so varied and you don’t get that in many roles actually.

Charlie: No, that’s a really common theme in loyalty actually.

Charlie: I get that from a lot of my guests where they talk about the fact they get to work across so many disciplines, but also so many areas of the business and with so many partners.

Charlie: So it is, it’s a lovely kind of quite holistic role, I think that comes out a lot from our guests.

Charlie: I mean, talking of holistic, Kuba, obviously we’ve talked about you sitting in the global team and your role for that.

Charlie: And Shell, I think is probably one of the programs who’s in the most markets in the world.

Charlie: Are you able to share with a few of our listeners about how you actually manage that?

Charlie: How do you look at loyalty across all those different markets and all those different models?

Charlie: And what are the sort of key principles that you use that unite everything?

Charlie: Because I know Shell doesn’t do a one size fits all approach, which is quite interesting.

Jakub: Yeah, no, we don’t.

Jakub: And you think about Shell, right?

Jakub: It’s one of the largest retail network in the world with like 46,000 stations.

Jakub: And we are operating a loyalty program in more than 25 markets across three regions with very millions of customers who are engaging with us on a monthly basis.

Jakub: And those customers are different.

Jakub: So what unites Shell loyalty?

Jakub: I think it’s the commitment to drive the share of wallet, what we call share of heart and share of life for our customers.

Jakub: So whether you are an engaging with a program in Europe, in Asia or in North America, the experience, the field that we want to provide to you is distinct to Shell.

Jakub: So it’s rewarding, it’s trusted and it’s easy to use.

Jakub: And when you work with so many different markets, it’s really in practice to ensure that you have a unified vision.

Jakub: Where every single market that we work with really bites into our Shell Global Loyalty Strategy.

Jakub: The only way to do it is by collaborating very closely with the markets, right?

Jakub: Spending times and days with them, talking about the vision that we want to achieve and ensuring that those markets buy into this strategy really helps us to grow.

Jakub: Second aspect, which is very important at Shell, is learner’s mindset.

Jakub: So because we collaborate with markets, we also are able to identify opportunities and test new things.

Jakub: I mean, John just mentioned, right?

Jakub: You can do one day, you can work on a complex technical element.

Jakub: On the second day, you actually work on the nice creatives.

Jakub: And really what Shell makes us, I think, different is, we test one thing in one market, and then we learn from it.

Jakub: And if it’s successful, we actually take it, we replicate and we scale it up.

Jakub: However, if something doesn’t work, I mean, we prefer to fail fast, right?

Jakub: I mean, not everything works well.

Jakub: And then at the end of the day, it’s all about scalable solutions and how do we maintain efficiency.

Jakub: So even though we don’t have one size fits all, we also look for opportunities for the efficiency, speed to market.

Jakub: But we always need to keep that local aspect in mind.

Charlie: Nice.

Charlie: I think that’s a really interesting approach, actually.

Charlie: And we’re seeing, I think, lots of brands globally moving to that approach, actually, and that sort of freedom in a framework model where you’ve got vision and principles and testing and relationships that unite, but with that kind of tailored approach to local markets.

Charlie: And I think it’s really wonderful, actually, to have a global representative and a market representative on the podcast, because John here is providing a wonderful case study of what freedom in a framework can look like.

Charlie: So what does Shell Go Plus look like in the UK and how do you line it up to those global principles?

Jonathan: Yeah, so Go Plus is our main loyalty platform.

Jonathan: It operates across 1,000 forecourts all over the UK from, you know, Lanzand, literally right up to the tip of Scotland.

Jonathan: It is a 95% app-based program.

Jonathan: And in terms of the alignment with our global colleagues, again, to what Jakub said, you know, it’s the shared vision, a lot of shared platforms and technology that we used across the estate.

Jonathan: And we work very, very closely on our overall strategy, almost sort of hand in glove with our global colleagues.

Jonathan: And then we adapt it locally, of course.

Jonathan: But I think, you know, from the point of view of the loyalty program itself, at its core, it’s a points-based program.

Jonathan: So you earn points on your, you know, your fueling up, selected shop items.

Jonathan: Recently, we’ve added in EV.

Jonathan: So it’s a totally fuel-agnostic program.

Jonathan: But there’s so much more to it.

Jonathan: We’ve leaned into a lot of learnings from outside of the UK to create a very layered program.

Jonathan: So for example, we have buy 7-hour drinks, get one free.

Jonathan: That was things that we picked up from other markets that we thought would be very applicable to the UK.

Jonathan: We have member pricing.

Jonathan: So on many of our ranger shop items, whether it’s items in the shop or even car wash, we do special member pricing on those.

Jonathan: EV charging, actually, we have member pricing on EV charging.

Jonathan: You save 10 pence per kilowatt.

Jonathan: And then on top of that, we use a lot of the global platforms around gamification.

Jonathan: We’ve leaned very heavily into personalised gamification.

Jonathan: That’s worked brilliantly for us.

Jonathan: And then, of course, the whole CRM area.

Jonathan: So we do a huge amount of individual personalised rewarding the same based on customer’s behaviour.

Charlie: Yeah.

Charlie: And I think it’s really interesting to watch that programme evolve over the last sort of five to ten years, particularly in the UK market.

Charlie: You can see where you sort of tried stuff out, reacted, adapted, optimised.

Charlie: And it’s really nice actually that you talk about that blended approach from what you’ve learned from all the other markets.

Charlie: I mean, that’s probably been quite the journey, John.

Charlie: What are some of the highs and lows that you’ve had on that journey, particularly in the UK market?

Charlie: And then, Kuba, it’s your turn to think about the question.

Charlie: I’ll ask you that from a global point of view.

Jonathan: I’m on the spot first, am I?

Jonathan: Yeah, I think in terms of, I mean, a high would have to be, we made a major resolution in the programme last year.

Jonathan: So we moved from an older model to a new based model that was points based, refreshed pretty much every aspect of the programme.

Jonathan: And I think the day that we launched that, that was real high.

Jonathan: And in particular, the thing that made it so good was, as you would imagine, being a big company, across all of our forecourt, we have in effect sort of an internal Facebook where people can upload photos of how things are going.

Jonathan: And we had literally all of those thousand sites were full of excitement, loading up photos.

Jonathan: We had balloons out across so many forecourts.

Jonathan: And we could see the excitement right across our estate, but also marrying up with all the great numbers that we were seeing coming through as well.

Jonathan: It was a really, really good moment.

Jonathan: That was definitely a high.

Charlie: Dare I ask about a low?

Charlie: Low?

Jonathan: I mean, when you’re in a big company, things can sometimes take a bit longer.

Jonathan: They can be a little perhaps more complicated than you’d like them to be.

Jonathan: So I think that there’s been no big dramatic low, but I think clearly in a large complex organization, there are lows in terms of things that you really want to do at a particular time.

Jonathan: Just can’t happen because there’s just so much else going on.

Charlie: I think that’s very common feedback actually that we get.

Charlie: Particularly, as you say, from really big organizations, you have ideas that are just as creative, but then by the time you try and execute them, it can be more challenging.

Charlie: Let’s scale that up one level from one market execution to a global playing field.

Charlie: What about you, Kuba?

Charlie: There are some highs and lows of what loyalty looks like globally, from current roles or previous obviously.

Jakub: Yeah.

Jakub: I think on the lows, let me start there.

Jakub: I think I do resonate with what John said.

Jakub: I think those lows are already tied to how do we scale things faster?

Jakub: How do we actually bring things faster to market?

Jakub: Probably, that’s where some of the times I think you can do it faster, but actually, you need to navigate through certain challenges.

Jakub: But eventually, we do get there.

Jakub: In terms of the highs for me, it’s really one is being able to actually work alongside people who are so passionate about loyalty.

Jakub: I mean, that’s my, you know, with Shell is my first global role.

Jakub: So it’s really being able to collaborate with so many different people and learn from them.

Jakub: I think this has been a very big opportunity that I’ve been taking advantage from at Shell.

Jakub: And the second thing that I would call is being able to pilot things with the markets.

Jakub: I think it’s not always easy to get market buy-in to get things started.

Jakub: But I think we’ve had so many different initiatives that we were able to take to the market and re-bring them to life and then scale it.

Jakub: Which really been an amazing journey.

Charlie: Yeah, it’s really satisfying, isn’t it?

Charlie: I love that.

Charlie: When a pilot works, obviously, we won’t talk about when a pilot doesn’t work.

Charlie: We have to try and figure out why.

Charlie: I think that brings us really nicely onto one of the things I’m most passionate about for Shell GoClass.

Charlie: And I think you’re probably one of the best in the world at which is partnerships, big, meaty partnerships that really resonate with audiences globally with some sports, but also some areas beyond sports.

Charlie: I’m going to ask you, Kuba, this sort of question.

Charlie: I think many of our audience might not know, let’s hope they do, but they might not know.

Charlie: What are the partnerships that Shell has and how do you leverage and work with those in the loyalty space?

Jakub: Yeah, part of this has been a big thing for Shell and will be a big thing going forward.

Jakub: We’re currently focusing on a partnership that really bring mutual benefits, a partnership that really can look into having similar objectives and really being on the same journey for a long term, not really short term activation, looking about the long term opportunities.

Jakub: As you said, we have a very strong footprint in the motorsports area where we partner with brands such as BMW, Nissan, Ferrari.

Jakub: And as the audience might not know, this year we are celebrating our 75th anniversary of partnership with Scudera Ferrari HP team, which is a huge milestone for both companies.

Jakub: And really, this partnership goes beyond just a few.

Jakub: And in our space, it really goes towards the Shell Go Plus members.

Jakub: And we really work with brands like Ferrari to elevate the experience that we provide to our customers.

Jakub: So last year, we decided to really come up with something completely new for our members and really tap into their passions for racing, for speed, for car.

Jakub: And we launched this pilot campaign, luckily it was a successful one, where we delivered to our members unique content that was only available to our Shell Go Plus members.

Jakub: We’ve piloted a new initiative which actually brought our Shell V-Power customers closer to the drivers from Ferrari and really elevate that overall experience.

Jakub: But our partnership doesn’t really start with the motorsports teams, it really goes beyond as well.

Jakub: So today we partner with different companies in different markets, with the grocery or insurance industry, like of Costa Coffee, Waitrose Lidl and we work with those brands to provide value added benefits to our members but also to partner base.

Charlie: Yeah, and I think it’s that diversity but also the depth and breadth of the partnerships that you have.

Charlie: I mean, 75 years of a partnership is amazing.

Charlie: I mean, that’s got to be like an industry.

Charlie: I think that’s got to be the industry’s longest kind of brand, the significant lasting brand partnership and it bakes across so many elements of your business.

Charlie: I absolutely love that.

Charlie: That’s one of my absolute favourites.

Charlie: It brings us on quite nicely because obviously those partnerships have been hugely successful.

Charlie: They’ve evolved over time and we know, you know, we know Shell measures everything.

Charlie: It brings us on to an interesting kind of conversation about how you look at success and what success means for the loyalty programme.

Charlie: And John, I’ll probably ask you this question because from a single market point of view, I’m sure there’s some really interesting things in the UK, particularly given the innovations you’ve introduced recently.

Charlie: What are your sort of key KPIs and what does success look like for you and then how do you measure it?

Jonathan: Yeah, as you can imagine, we’ve got a whole host of KPIs.

Jonathan: You know, we’re very good at giving ourselves KPIs.

Jonathan: And I guess there’s a lot of operational KPIs that we have around the loyalty programme, the CRM programme, largely relating to penetration across fuel and EV and our shop sale penetration, the amount of transactions that we do, how those link back to loyalty and so on.

Jonathan: But those are all sort of operational metrics that we track quite closely.

Jonathan: I would say the two biggest ones and the most important ones are really how many customers do we have in the programme that are active?

Jonathan: That’s a key one for us.

Jonathan: Then second one we have that’s really important is what is the incremental spend of customers that are in the programme versus when they were not in the programme?

Jonathan: So we partner very, very closely with our data science team.

Jonathan: They do all sorts of wonderfully clever stuff.

Jonathan: Some of it I understand, some of it I don’t.

Jonathan: But the outcome of it is that we can keep a really close eye on the value to Shell of somebody joining the loyalty programme.

Jonathan: And then we can really see that combination of both incremental times number of customers.

Jonathan: And that really gives us sort of a very clear number that we can go after.

Charlie: Yeah, and it’s really nice as well, because I think, as you say there, some programmes get lost in a vast sea of KPIs, don’t they?

Charlie: And you sort of end up trying to track 30 KPIs across in, you know, in Kuba’s across 20 over 20 markets, and it can get quite overwhelming.

Charlie: And so I think what I really admire about the programme is that focus on the kind of dominant too.

Charlie: And then that sort of secondary tier of operational KPIs.

Charlie: And those are the most important too, aren’t they?

Charlie: For kind of proving the value of the programme, but also understanding how to model it, how much to invest in it and all of those things, everything kind of falls out.

Charlie: So I think that’s a really smart approach.

Charlie: And I’m sure your team love working on that sort of hindsight piece.

Charlie: So that’s how it’s working and what it’s delivering.

Charlie: What about looking ahead?

Charlie: You know, if we take a foresight approach, I know you probably can’t tell us everything, but if there is anything that you can share, you know, what sort of areas are you looking at for the future and what does that look like?

Charlie: And John, we’ll start with you.

Jonathan: Yeah, sure.

Jonathan: So I think in the near term, there are clear areas that we want to build out on.

Jonathan: As Jakub has already mentioned, we want to do much more around partnerships.

Jonathan: I think we’ve got some big things that are coming up, but also we want to go further than the ones that will be coming up quite shortly.

Jonathan: I think obviously we want to make sure that we’re adding more value to customers as they join the program.

Jonathan: I think we’ll see a big enhancement in the type of tangible and perhaps more emotional benefits we load into the program.

Jonathan: And certainly for customers that are perhaps our biggest spenders, they may find that they find a lot more to enjoy in the program as we go forward over the coming weeks and months.

Jonathan: So that’s sort of short-term and then I think really long-term if you look at what we’re doing and some of the testing and piloting that we’re doing with AI.

Jonathan: And really for me it really boils down to, can we make things more relevant and can we decide at a per customer level the right amount to invest.

Jonathan: And if you look at some of the things we’re doing around that, I think some of it’s working, some of it, you know, we’re still on a learning journey, but there’s a lot of potential there that I think we can unlock around that area of using AI, not only for the way that we personalise, but also just in terms of throughput, making our processes more efficient and effective.

Jonathan: So we get more throughput, again, with more treatments to more customers and then the two sort of go hand in hand.

Charlie: Nice.

Charlie: And I’m sure a lot of those themes align globally as well, Kuba.

Charlie: Are there any extra areas that you’re looking at globally or key areas for the future?

Jakub: Yeah, I think looking at it from that perspective, I think one of the key elements for us is really elevating our program beyond just the transactional benefits.

Jakub: It’s really topping into that storytelling into what I’ve mentioned from a fashion industry, right?

Jakub: How do we build that community and how do we really elevate the experience that we give to our customers?

Jakub: Because those customers, right, are not only a motorsports fan.

Jakub: They can be passionate about travel.

Jakub: They can be passionate about spa, about dining, right?

Jakub: And we want to tab into that element of the customer interest.

Jakub: And the other thing which is important for us is also see how can we be faster in terms of replications.

Jakub: As I said, we have a lot of markets where we test different things.

Jakub: And then how do we scale it?

Jakub: How do we make sure that the time to market is even shorter than it is today?

Jakub: At the end of the day, we need to really understand the customers.

Jakub: We really need to find ways to be faster in responding to their new needs.

Jakub: Nice.

Charlie: Well, you never know.

Charlie: Some of the stuff John and his team are looking at in AI might help you do something.

Jakub: Exactly.

Charlie: What sort of areas have you seen recently or any innovations that you particularly admire?

Charlie: They might be something from Shell or it might be something externally.

Charlie: Is there anything particularly good that you’ve seen recently?

Jakub: I can go first on this one.

Jakub: For me, it’s actually what we’ve done last year.

Jakub: We elevated that this year where when you think about the experiences, a lot of the people think about just those money cannot buy experiences where you can just send a single customer and they enjoy the benefit.

Jakub: But actually, what we managed to do is actually deliver the more of a virtual experience to customers.

Jakub: And really that brought them exclusively closer to the Ferrari drivers.

Jakub: And something that was a pilot last year has really expanded this year across Shell.

Jakub: I think it was really in the sense of innovation and new idea because it was never done before.

Jakub: So really it picked up some nice trend that we can now actually bring even more to our customers in different markets.

Jakub: And really tapping, and really again, going back to the customer interest, how do we make sure that we actually understand our customers beyond what they buy at Shell, but actually understanding their interests outside of Shell.

Jakub: And also we are bringing this element into our communication even more right now.

Charlie: Brilliant.

Charlie: I can’t wait to see it all roll out.

Charlie: And I know which markets that was piloted in.

Charlie: I was smug and my shoulders are all up and isn’t that fabulous.

Charlie: I know readers you’ll find out soon, listeners you’ll find out soon.

Charlie: What about you John, is there anything you’ve seen or done recently that you think is particularly innovative?

Charlie: You’ve already talked about quite a bit of it in the UK, but anything that stands out?

Jonathan: I think the ones to call out are really, really proud of bringing EV into our loyalty program.

Jonathan: So that means that we genuinely are fuel agnostic.

Jonathan: So whether a customer has a traditional engine or an EV engine, they are just a customer and we treat them as part of the program.

Jonathan: So that was a big move for us, lots behind it, but we’re really, really pleased with that.

Jonathan: I think perhaps more tactically, the whole thing that we’ve done around gamification, lots of different approaches that we’ve taken there, and different things over different times, that’s consistently worked very well for us in terms of engaging customers.

Jonathan: Then I think some of the things that we’ve done, just around CRM treatments, and we’ve rolled in things like member weeks, where people get five times points for certain purchases, not in itself ground breaking, but has worked really well for us, and we’re really pleased with it.

Jonathan: So there’s been a few things that we’ve done locally that, yeah, we can look back on and say, it’s worked really well.

Charlie: I love the fact that you’ve got the really kind of big new stuff and then the little stuff in as well.

Charlie: And I think actually, you can get a lot from making those little changes.

Charlie: And sometimes they don’t feel as big, do they?

Charlie: But actually, when they all add up, it’s quite a nice cumulative effect.

Charlie: So that’s really lovely to get that global perspective and then that UK perspective.

Charlie: Well, look, thank you so much for sharing as much as you’ve been able to today on this podcast.

Charlie: It’s been absolutely brilliant.

Charlie: And I really have enjoyed that view of the UK market versus the global view.

Charlie: I’m sure some of our listeners or watchers might have some extra questions for you.

Charlie: What’s the best way to reach out to you both?

Charlie: Kuba, you first, and then John.

Jakub: Yeah, I mean, feel free to reach out via the LinkedIn contact.

Charlie: I’ll put Kuba’s profile details in the show notes for you, so you can get through to him on LinkedIn.

Charlie: And is that the same for you, John?

Jonathan: Exactly the same.

Jonathan: LinkedIn is perfect.

Charlie: Oh, wonderful.

Charlie: And then we’ll also put links to the program as well in the show notes.

Charlie: Well, look, all that’s left for me to say is thank you so much.

Charlie: That was a brilliant episode and I’m loving the wintry backgrounds as well.

Charlie: So that’s really nice too.

Charlie: So hopefully that’s a visual treat for our watchers.

Charlie: And the rest of you who just listen are just stuck with our voices.

Charlie: But it’s been a great episode.

Charlie: So thank you so much.

Jakub: Thank you, Charlie, for having us.

Jonathan: Yeah, thanks for having us, Charlie.

Jonathan: Appreciate it.

Jonathan: Thank you.

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