Fueling Loyalty: How ADNOC Is Redefining Convenience Retail (#685)

Deepak: At the end of the day, a loyalty program is to build trust with your customer and to improve customer stickiness. ’cause that’s, that’s what drives, the program to allow customers, yes, need discounts. They look for offers, but at the same point in time, they like to be associated with brands which they value.

And, you know, the brand speaks to their persona as well. So, UAE as a market, uh. It’s an oil producing country, like a lot of other Middle Eastern countries, and probably one of the, one of the very obvious things for people would be, why do you need a loyalty program? So. We decided to build the best and the flagship, gas station very recently in the Dubai, in Dubai, in inside the city.

And that’s not even in the outskirts. It’s inside the city to have the best of technology to make it a model station in order to make everything that is possible and, you know, that can be implemented from an AI and digital transformation point view. So it’s about repetition and it’s about volume of purchase as well.

So we would not like, to have, you know, the, those, these are two factors you need to be frequent in the gas station. And users also need to fill a certain amount of value of, uh. Purchase from us in a designated amount of time. Yeah, so I have been in the loyalty space for almost 20 years now. It’s two decades of experience and customer marketing, technology marketing, and trying to match our technology and, marketing can combine together to give the best value proposition for our customers.

Paula: This show is brought to you by Comarch, the global loyalty partner, trusted by enterprise brands in over 50 countries. With more than 30 years of experience and 290 million loyalty members on board, Comarch knows what it takes to build real connections that last. Their AI powered tools turn data into action and customers into superfans from fraud proof platforms to personalized journeys.

Comarch helps you boost engagement, grow revenue, and make loyalty your competitive edge. Want to see how they do it? Head over to Comarch.com and discover loyalty that actually works. Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty tv, A show for loyalty marketing professionals. 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.

Today’s episode is part of the Wiser Loyalty Series and is hosted by Bill Hannafin, chief Executive Officer of the Wise Marketeer Group. The Wise Marketeer Group is a media education and advisory services company. Providing resources for loyalty marketeers through the Wise Marketeer digital publication and the Loyalty Academy program that offers the Certified Loyalty Marketing professional or CLMP designation.

I hope you enjoyed this episode, brought to you by Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV in partnership with the Wise Marketeer Group.

Bill: Welcome everybody. I’m Bill Hannafin. I’m the managing editor of The Wise Marketer, and we’re here for a Wiser Loyalty podcast series produced in partnership with Let’s Talk Loyalty and The Wise Marketer, and twice a month.

What we’re doing right this year is that we’re bringing you an interview with C-Suite level. Executives who have transformed strategy into practical application to generate business results. And in today’s episode, we’ve got a recognized industry figure Deepak PR on who’s manager of customer engagement loyalty payments in the analytics division at ADNOC distribution.

So Deepak, how are you?

Deepak: I am doing fantastic, bill. Nice to meet you. And, thanks for the introduction.

Bill: Yeah, yeah. There’s a, there’s a lot more, I’ve got a little more, I mean, I’m so excited to talk to you because, um, well for, for a number of things, you know, but I mean, the conversation right now that we set up is all about the future of convenience and fuel retailing and.

I’ve spent a lot of time in, in that sector myself, in the US North America. But I think what we’re gonna talk about today is gonna create what I call store envy. A a amongst my North American colleagues. I think they’re gonna hear some things that are gonna make them, say, oh my gosh, I wish I could be doing that.

So, um, we’ll, we’ll get into it, but the, the state of the art at ADNOC, and we’ll talk about the company, is, it’s incredible to me. Um. It’s much more than the usual customer loyalty fair, if you will. Um, you know, the way you match up the store footprint with ai, powered analytics, um, behind it to create a great customer experience is amazing.

Um, so I thought we could dig into this, the innovation really that you’re putting forth, you know, in, in a new brand new retail model that I think we’re seeing. So like for those that don’t know. ADNOC is is the UA e’s United Arab Emirates. For those that don’t like acronyms, the largest fuel and convenience retailer.

it’s listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, and it operates in all seven of the Emirates being the largest operator in Abu Dhabi Saja and the Northern Emirates. Um, now Deepak may correct me, but, my understanding is that you’re operating around 850 locations at present, which is something like 500 across all the Emirates.

Um, probably 80 or so in, in, Saudi Arabia, and then about 300 in Egypt. So it’s, it is a very large footprint, cross border. Cross cultural. It means that there’s a lot of complexity to what we’re doing, so. Um, to, to give you a quick overview on, on what we’re gonna talk about. ’cause I did a little bit of research before we talked.

I mean, the, the, your Oasis convenience stores, they’re fully autonomous is what I’m reading. They’re combining AI in a contactless payment technology that allows people to tap, shop and, and get on their way quite easily. you’re employing cameras that create virtual shopping baskets and your shelves have smart sensors.

You have real time digital pricing on a lot of products. I mean, it’s just from every angle you’re introducing some digital intelligence into the customer experience and, um, and fill and go, which I guess is your personalized AI driven, personalized customer experience for fueling. Um, it’s the region’s first program.

I, I, we’re, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit and um, and then you’ve also got some really neat and brand new, um. Um, store layouts. So this flagship service center in Dubai, I hope we can talk about that a little bit. It’s apparently a two story operation, which, which looked, like a destination type shop.

Forget about just going and getting fuel and leaving. You have to go inside right. And visit. So anyway, that’s, that’s, that’s maybe, just a good setup. You know, I just wanted to make sure that people knew what was coming and what you’re doing. And, um, I want to hear maybe a good, really good place to start is just to know about you a little bit.

Deepak we met. Last year in Amsterdam, and it’s a real pleasure that you joined us here today. And, um, so I just wanted to know, like tell me a little bit about how you came to be in the loyalty space, maybe what your journey’s been and how you, you came to edno into your current position.

Deepak: Yeah, sure, sure.

Well, thanks. yeah. So I have been in the loyalty space for almost 20 years now. It’s two decades of experience in customer marketing, technology marketing, and trying to. Match our technology and, marketing can combine together to give the best value proposition for customers. So I believe it’s, it’s very important to understand where your customers are at.

You may be working on a very boutique kind of a program or a mass program like we do at, at my current role. So it’s all all about having the interest of, where do you see yourself growing and what really excites you. So for me. Customer driven marketing really, really excites me because it has a lot to do with not just, you know, churning out offers.

It’s all to do with understanding your customers. Lot of, lots of data, lots of, analytics, and it’s brilliant to see what technology can do as of today. From the days when, two decades ago, we were actually, asking customers to fill out a visitor book to take their details. So it’s, it’s been a great journey from that point.

So programs are more, handy from the point of you. You could do so many things. Probably, I would say the handheld device, mobile phone becomes, one of the truest points of customer interactions. So customer touch points, can be converted into customer engagement points to bring value to customers.

So I’ve been working, in this space in various industries like, banking, insurance. Energy and, retail. So my specialty has been, building CRM programs, and building loyalty programs. I’ve built about eight loyalty programs in my lifetime from scratch, and, worked with major brands like, marks and Spencer, Ikea.

Ad knock, and many more such brands, Robinsons Kbi Watsons. So it’s been a great learning trying to see how different organizations and brands who. Coming from various geographies, and how do they design their programs in order to get the best of value? At the end of the day, a loyalty program is to build trust with your customer and to improve customer stickiness.

’cause that’s, that’s what drives, the program to a long term. And I’ve seen loyalty programs fail. I’m not saying all my programs have been successful. Some of the programs have not. So it’s a great learning to see what really works. the seasonality, the, the, the, the market, forces, everything has an impact.

So it’s, it’s great to have. All of that combined. And, I, I would say loyalty as a concept is not very understandable for a lot of people. But, through time I’ve seen senior management and CXO really looking towards loyalty as a very important, input for building brands, for creating customer stickiness.

So it’s been a ride where you’ve been a cost center. To move to a profit center because, that’s how you need to understand if your program is going to make money for the brand. That’s more or less is basically the question. But, there are so many intangible things that you cannot, value about, a loyalty program.

Like how, how valuable is data? You cannot put a value value to it. You have to make sense to use the data to get you more, more benefit to the brand, which is probably, creating more brand equity, more value to the customer, which can be soft and benefits because customers, yes, need discounts. They look for offers, but at the same point in time, they like to be associated with brands which they value.

And, you know, the brand speaks to their persona as well. So there’s so many elements in a loyalty program that you see from customer to brand, to supply chain, to finance, et cetera. So all of that has been very exciting for me and I’d say, it has given me great learning to be in this space, various industries and various geographies, which, which is, probably now being siphoned back to what I’m doing currently with my brand in adoc.

Bill: That’s great. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. Tremendous experience and it’s, it’s interesting. I love that you mentioned trust at the beginning. I have a really good friend who tells me he has got an expression that, relationships grow at the speed of trust. And I thought, how true? Right? So you, and if you do establish trust, it, it, it, um, it like covers off any of your concerns about, you know, being creepy with data or being too invasive or all these things.

Like if you’ve, if you’re working from a trusting relationship, you’ve got a really solid foundation and I think it opens a lot of doors for opportunity.

Deepak: Absolutely. I’m 100%. I can’t agree more.

Bill: Yeah, that’s good. So why don’t we start by digging into the, this customer experience that you’re, that you’ve put together at adnoc.

Um, I mean, you know, we, I mentioned in that intro about the ai, the cameras, the digital pricing, um, some of the real time pricing and things like that. Can you just describe really the reality, let’s say if you’re a customer walking into some of your stores, like, what’s happening and what are people experiencing today?

I.

Deepak: Cool. So I’ll just try to set up a little bit of context, because that’s probably one of the important things that, you need to know. I, I’m sure you have done your homework, so, so, UAE as a market, it’s an oil producing country, like a lot of other Middle Eastern countries, and probably one of the, one of the very obvious things for people would be, why do you need a loyalty program?

In the first place and what you need to, invent, things, why you need to put so much of technology while, you know, just maintaining a gas station. So the outlook is actually very different because, whilst we do our, and, and we are an oil producing country, I mean there is a lot of competition as well because there are other brands.

It is about protecting your market share, and it can only happen while you get great value through technology and, innovation. All of these elements actually make your business more efficient, more faster, make it more predictive, give, gives customers more understanding about, what they should buy, what they should be able to look into in the future, and things like that.

So on a, on a landscape, uh. UA is, seven Emirates, seven different provinces, if you can put it that way. the way happens to be the, one of the most populous, Emirate. And then you have Abu Dhabi and many more other animals. We are based out of Abu Dhabi. We, we are the first, we were the first, fuel pro, loyalty program in the region.

So we take pride in that. And, we actually launched when COVID was at its peak in way back in July, 2019. So that was the tough time to actually start a program. So at the same point in time, it was very, very important for us to have tech, the right technology in place, not just for, the backend where we would be having all the information and data house with all the required.

You know, having the right scale and the right technology for our, our size of business, but also at the front end on how the customer experience has to be. So from a cultural perspective, which is actually one of the most important things in UAE, you have, different kinds of customer. We are a mass product, okay?

So it’s, it’s a product which is for the entirety of the country. So you have, fleet owners, you have, cab drivers. You have royalty, you have executives, you have uh the lower middle class, the middle, middle class, et cetera. So how do you try to build a program which is easily understandable and absorptive in terms of benefits?

So keep it simple. Keep the proposition simple. Keep the technology simple because when we do something, we have to always take into consideration the scale of the program. So. what we, what we started the program with is, you know, you need, because only, only. Eight to 10% of the population is, the local population of ue.

But the rest is, everybody who’s an expat who comes to the country to work on a resident visa. So that’s the landscape. So you get something called a national ID card or in, in, I, I think a social security number would be one of the things that you can relate to for the US market. So. You could only be a part of the program if you had a resident card.

So that was basically how we started. The reason being that it should be usable for an 80-year-old, local woman and probably a 20-year-old young. College kid who’s just started driving. So that’s becomes the unif uniformity of the program. And from there we, we build the mobile application, which is the center of, everything that we house, all the technology built on it.

So it has evolved from there to now where, where the mobile application becomes the central point of all the activation and activity that you can find. All the offers are there, all the technologies there, and very. very surprisingly what you just mentioned about how when a customer goes to a gas station, you probably don’t even have to talk to the fuel attendant.

You pick up the pump that you are in, you choose the pump on your mobile app, you activate the pump and somebody’s gonna come open the fuel cap and start fueling. No, no discussions required. And this is culturally very important because there are some, there’s a sensitive about communicating with women in the region as well.

So you need to be mindful who would like to talk to you and who would not like to talk to you. So those elements are so there. So technology helps us a lot in that. And, great that you mentioned about our store and, our, our gas station in Dubai. So Dubai happens to be one of the markets where we have strong competition from other brands in Dubai.

we were not present in Dubai for a very long time. We’ve just started building gas stations in Dubai, which is already. I mean for, for, for a scale around 40 to 43% of the UA population actually lives in the Dubai. So that’s the kind of market that we’re looking at. So. We decided to build the best and the flagship, gas station very recently in the Dubai, in Dubai, in inside the city.

And that’s not even in the outskirts. It’s inside the city to have the best of technology to make it a model station in order to make everything that is possible. And, you know. That can be implemented from an AI and digital transformation point of view. So it’s uber cool. whenever you’re in the region, I would highly encourage to go and visit the station so it has all the technology that you can think about.

So our, uh. Our approach is always trying to use the best of technology and scale it up. When we talk about scaling it up, we are talking about 800 gas stations. It, may not look very big in a US kind of a market because you have a lot of gas stations out there. But for the UAE market, I think that’s a pretty big side in terms of implementation and a lot of other things.

And, and trying to be, in a situation where. Every customer interaction due in, in a fuel station, split into two parts. You know, one is a convenience store, which is a pretty, very homely and very, cool environment. And then you have a gas, fuel attendant who’s standing in 40 degree heat trying to interact with the customer, with the cool proposition and still smiling on his face.

So these are different environments that we can think about. And how do you manage? The kind of disparity of these two environments and still give the best customer service. So technology, is, is, is very much embedded into making it better. We are in the process of a major AI and DT digital transformation, from 2024.

It’s been taken up by a lot more projects that will be coming to life in, 2025 and 26. Obviously, I will not be able to tell so much about it because it’s, under the wraps. So the, the offerings to customers will become very clearer. I. customers getting the right and absolutely targeted interaction while they’re in the gas station.

the right identification and the right, script, all those things will be also. Improving a lot. we are working a lot towards it. we are improving a lot of technology in our car services like car wash and loop, so that’s going to take a notch higher on what we could do. and we are trying to expand a lot in other non-fuel businesses as well.

So you’d be surprised to know we run Burger King a, a good part of Burger King outlets in our station, so that’s, that belongs to us. In addition to the usual Burger Kings that are run by a different franchise. So we would be looking a lot of traction on that as well. So, non-fuel, this is one of the examples, including many more other businesses, which is associated to a, you know, vehicle.

So I believe, technology on the front end of it, and the back end of it is, is, is, is very, uh. Crucial. And we, we looked to a lot of innovation. In fact, last year we had a, a very viral video about a robotic arm in a gas station, which was fueling a car. So that is one of the kind of technologies that we’re looking at as well, which was still under pilot, but I think it went very viral for the.

So, we do like to experiment a lot and see what best can be done. So I believe we are on the right track on, on, on technology. convenience stores will again, become very, you know, the store environment will become more, more organized in terms of, how a retail environment is, looked upon like.

Paddle stores, they’ve been doing it fors. But how do you bring that edge into a convenience store vis-a-vis? the point that, I would like to highlight is we have a strong competition on that as well, because you have the normal convenience stores right outside the gas station. So what would make a customer actually purchase something from you?

needless to say, we run a very successful bakery and barista brand. we do our own coffee. Okay. It’s, Guatemalan, Colombian, Venezuela beans. Okay. This is very, very good. I mean, if you’re ever, in the way, I would highly recommend you to try it. and, I, I, and you would be surprised with the kind of quality of, brew that we do and it’s a great spread.

And we also do, you know, bakery business, freshly brewed croissants and, many more things on the spread. So that also is one of our focus areas to grow, and we see great value in that. And, in addition to whatever we sell in the convenience store as a. As a distributor and, and, and as a reseller.

Hey, can I ask you, so I believe

Bill: do, do you do bean to cup for coffee? Do you do bean to cup or do you do it in another way? How do you deliver the coffee?

Deepak: No, it’s bean to cup. So you, we are in the process of getting, our own brand, private label as well. So you could probably buy our own brew of, coffee beans in the future.

So right now it’s, brew to cup and, it’s, it’s amazing. I even, I didn’t know that we do such a great coffee before I joined this organization, so it’s a, it’s a great surprise. So it’s

Bill: awesome. Yeah. So how, how are you using, um, the technology to personalize the experience for people when they’re at the pump?

Like this idea, if, if I got the idea right that a camera might sense. Maybe by looking at your license tag or something, you know, who you are, whether you’re a member of the loyalty program and maybe you get some special offer. It could be the same way inside the store, but what, what kind of things are you doing in, in that nature?

Deepak: Yeah, so there are two ways. we do this, on the, on the loyalty program through the mobile application. You could add your vehicle number as a registered number. And, there are, there are, there are gas stations where we do something called, you know, fill and go. when you come into the gas station and you come to a fuel pump, there are fixed cameras which will scan your, number plate, and then it’s gonna prompt you the, the kind of full fuel that you want to purchase, the kind of value that you wanna purchase, and that’s gonna be completely automated.

So in the gas station, on the fuel base, you have a specific box where you have to fit in your car. That takes care of it. The next way that we do this is every handheld device where payments are collected by the fuel attendants. It’s it’s a very sleek Android device. it has a capability of scanning number plates through a camera as well.

It’s, you can scan your QR codes, you can scan your barcodes, and you can actually scan the number plates as well, so you can scan the number plate. And we are in the process of building a more hyper personalized journey. Where that device can actually talk about what offers does the customer have and what can be pitched further.

So it is in the process of, doing more key hyper-personalization projects. We, we look at hyper-personalization as one of the key elements. And again, we, we are ing with a lot of, vendors. we, we work on the loyalty platform with, a brand called Comarch Comarch is based out of, Poland. it’s been with us for a very long time.

We’ve been working for the last, almost more than five years now. And, all the marketing automation is powered by Salesforce. So we are a very strategic partner for Salesforce for the region. one of the biggest terms, so Comarch along with Salesforce builds, a very, you know, it, it’s, it’s been, a very homogeneous.

Experience for customers by getting points and getting experiences and pushing the right kind of offer at the right point in time. And we do a lot of analytics, at the backend trying to understand, customer behavior, create personas. in fact we go to that down to detail that we, we do not do customer personas across the region in, in the same manner.

We create personas depending on the market that we operate in. So maybe we have something called, you know, frequent fuelers. We have VIP loyals, we have promotional, somebody who’s looking for promotions. So these three segments would be very different if you pick up a specific Emirate like Abu Dhabi or Tobuy and things like that.

Because of the market, the, the, the, the landscape is very different. Someplace you have a lot of competition. Someplace you don’t have a lot of com competition. So the right, offer to the right segment, pushed in the right manner. These are the three elements of our hyper-personalization story. So works in different, different systems.

But I think, we’ve done a very good job on that.

Bill: That’s great. So tell me, when did you launch Aocc Rewards and, um, can you share just maybe some of the key design principles? ’cause you, you were talking about your experience, you’ve worked in a lot of different verticals. So you brought all this experience to bear and you had specific objectives with this program when you launched it.

So what are the key elements of the value proposition and how does it work?

Deepak: Right. So, one of the most important things was, like I mentioned earlier, how does the program get, understanding for a different kind of, and, pulls apart kind of customer, psychology. I mean, personas. From a demographic demography point of, point, you have so many different kinds of customers.

So understanding of the program and adaptability of the program was one of the things. The second thing was if you need to have, acceptable program, you need to have the value proposition, which is extremely competitive in the market. When we started the program in July, 2019, it was the first fuel loyalty program and then many more programs, you know, sprung up on the way with the competition.

And, then we studied other markets as well on how are the programs work. Because the most valuable proposition was, the key element to actually do the program. When the launch happened, we improved the value proposition going along the way, probably after, if I’m not wrong, almost, two and a half years after the program run.

So the value proposition was up. You could actually, we, we upped the value proposition to three times of what it was at that point in time. And then after that, we introduced, peers in the program. A first program in the region. The basic understanding of a program was why do you need something called a tiers and how would you make a differentiation of a tiered program with customers?

So it’s very easy to understand how you could do personalized services and, specific, designated counters for customers in a retail kind of an environment, but in a gas station where anybody. Can fuel, how do you make that differentiation? So our differentiation was on getting customized offers on a regular and monthly basis to differentiate customers.

It was something that was super important to see how customers get value. So if you fill five times in a month from me, and if you fill a certain value from me, then you slowly get up the ladder from, you know, blue to silver, to gold, to platinum. And, you have offers on bar, bakery and barista, car wash loop changes, and even points collection.

So there is a huge difference on what you get from Blue and what you get from platinum. So it’s about a repetition and it’s about volume of purchase as well. So we would not like, you have, you know, those, those, these are two factors. You need to be frequent in the gas station and you also need to fill a certain amount of value of, uh.

purchase from us in a designated amount of time, and tiers are managed annually. you could upgrade anytime, but once you upgraded, you stay on the tier for, a full year. So that is absolutely fantastic, I would say from a value proposition and you get continuous offers on a, on a monthly basis.

So all of that, differentiation has, has kind of, got us in point and we do a lot of, a lot of, a lot of work with, various other teams within the business. We, anything that we want to try out in terms of. You know, competitions and raffles and, you know, leaderboards, et cetera. We, we do it through rewards the loyalty program.

So our, our most of our, campaigns and major campaigns where we see value, it’s, it’s powered through rewards and, we would like to do it that way. So I’d say it has been, a development from when we launched value propositions changing, making it more sweeter by putting in tears, making it more, cohesive with the rest of the brand business, direction, and trying to get the, the rewards branding out, which, which is probably now more recognized across, across the emulates as one of the key programs and in terms of, volume and value.

And we have, a majority of the motorists, population in the UA as part of our program. So it’s a, it’s a huge sample size to actually try a lot of things.  So

Bill: I think I heard you say you have some gamification elements in the program. I.

Deepak: Yeah. So whenever we have something like a raffle or, raffles are very common in this part of the world.

Yeah. You know, you, you try, you try to win, a million s and value, you, you try to get 10 million points. You try to win Chev cars and, any, any, any cards for that matter. All of this is gamified when they come on the app as part of, the program. So they are. Probably for a quarter or for a month.

And it keeps on updating on the application and you can see how many entries you’ve got and things like that. So it’s, seasonal, but there is a gamification element that we like to run around and we are building a lot more on that as well, on regular gamification in the future. That’s good.

Bill: And, and how about things like, um, you mentioned car wash, so I was thinking do you have any subscription element for the car wash or do you have clubs for things like drinks or coffee?

Bakery.

Deepak: we are working on a few of those elements. you will see a lot of them coming up before the end of 2025. we see car wash as an extremely, important business because that is probably one of the most key elements, which gets frequency of customer visits into the gas station. Middle East full of dust sandstorms, you definitely a car wash.

It’s a very competitive market and so, it, it, it becomes a very important business for us. So we’ve, we’ve introduced new technology in car wash as well, so we have something called tunnel, tunnel car wash. We could actually wash three cars in the same bay at one point in time. Oh, so the capacity is also improved.

Wow. We used to have single standalone, high-tech car wash solutions where you could only flush one car, but now we can actually put three cars in a row and it can wash it. So the activity time of and the waiting time is completely different right now. that, that is how we are advancing with technology to make sure that the, the experience is sweeter, the wait times are lesser.

And, how do you use these wait times also. In order to communicate the right offer or pitch a product idea or a product offering, things like that, because, the cross selling of one service customer with another service is basically the sweet spot that anybody would like to do when you do fuel to c-store or car wash to, or c store to live.

I don’t know. The, the, the elements are so many more. Speaking of that,

Bill: that, that waiting time, do you have any videos at the pumps? Are you using any video at the moment?

Deepak: We are, improving that portion of the business right now. videos are basically something that we see from a branding perspective as very relevant.

but we would like to have that wait time to be engaging on the smartphone and the application of for the customer. So we see more value and more conversion on that. So we, we are working on a very. Highly intensive, cross-functional project where, how does the wait time actually involve, putting some content in the customer’s, mobile application whilst the waiting time is?

So that’s, that’s something that is in, is in the, is in the works. Okay. So I believe, we do have digital screens. In the gas station. but, sometimes the digital streams do not do justice to wait times in all areas of the gas station because you have fuel time, weight area, you have the ga lubricant weight area, you have car wash, weight area, so it may not cater to all the areas.

So we’re trying to make something which is, definitely, you know, going to be. One-on-one with the customer, and that’s the kind of hyper of personalization that we see value in the, the digital screens would still say, because they also have a specific kind of customer pro persona and demography who, who rely on that content.

So that’s, that’s definitely going to say, okay, so because it’s also required for normal messages and you know, many more other things.

Bill: Right. And, and how have you integrated payments into the program? Do you have any payment based incentives? If you pay a certain way, you get some incentives or, and is the payment, do you have a, a wallet or something in the mobile app?

Deepak: Yeah, absolutely. So the app has a wallet, it has a prepaid wallet, and, in fact, the national ID card that I mentioned earlier, it actually helps us do the KYC of the wallet as well. So you by default get a wallet, a prepaid wallet, once you join the program so you can load the wallet with money, and every time that you pay through the wallet, you actually get 25% more points.

So that is what we have incentivization on. Yeah. Yeah. And, we are now working on many more things on the project, on the payments mode. so for example, you, you could, you could, you can save a credit card on the payment, method on the. Once you use the credit card, it could actually add points directly to your, account.

You don’t have to pull out your mobile application to scan the QR code to add points and things like that, so you don’t have to recognize it yourself. If you have a saved card, it’ll actually seamlessly put through that, that, that point earning into your, into your account. So, and then many more things that, that we are working on.

The payments, process. It, it is probably. I’d say was, the core proposition of the program way back before even the rewards program had started. So, payments was primarily one of our key elements when we started, the, the, the wallet system. Long time back. This was because wallets are seen again considering the context of, the geography.

You would probably have a lot of people in the family driving many cars and the head of the household has a central wallet where they put money and then allocate the child accounts with required amount of money, which is like a provision for the month. And they would go and fill fuel rather than giving them cash.

And they are very sure that you use the money in the respective adox station only. So this is kind of. You know, culturally the norm in, in the region. And that’s probably how it started. And that’s why the world proposition is very, very strong for us.

Bill: That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. We could, I could tell, we, we could talk for hours about some of this stuff.

’cause it’s, it’s so interesting and, and what you’re doing is fascinating, but, um, I, I wanted to know this. So I assume you have the category management type of, management style for your, your vendor relationships. You, you do that in Ock in a traditional way. Um. Are, to what extent have you integrated that category management, um, into the loyalty program?

Like have you actually reallocated value from, say, the traditional way of, of marketing product in store, maybe into the mobile app and into the program? How’s that going?

Deepak: Right. I think that’s a very fair question to us because we kind of run a small supermarket inside the, inside the store. in a seed store.

So you have frozen product, you have water, you have bakery and barista, you have car accessories, you have baby products, you have, chocolates and sweetss and snacks and stuff like that. So for the distributorship kind of a product, yes, there is a different, kind of margin, but, the has a different kind of margin.

We’ve tried to keep it simple. We have not over complicated it because if you go to a normal supermarket kind of, loyalty program in the region, you have different earning points for different kinds of products because they have different margins. We have not done that. We have made it very simple. We are saying a very simple proposition, and that is where I was talking about the genesis of the whole program is you buy X in a C-store, you get X amount of points regardless of the amount or the kind of specific product that you buy.

So it’s highly integrated from understanding point of view. However, when we try to do a campaign, when we try to do a proposition, we are very clear on where do we want to. Spend and offer it, because that is when the margin counts, you know, there’s a co cup of coffee, make a difference, or there’s a cup of, you know, home brewed product tea makes a difference.

Or do you wanna give away, a specific brand of energy drink or, you know, the, the, the, the, the options are many and we work a lot with principle brands. There are some very specific principle brands who we are very strong with in terms of relationships. we are exclusive to some of the principle brands in the region.

You probably, just like, Footlocker is to Jordan’s. We would be having something very specific as a product, which is only available in adeno voices. So we have those kind of relationship as well. And we do a lot of, campaigning, designing on that when we try to launch a product or trying to give a specific shelf to the, to the, to the, to the, to the brand.

So these are elements that we do in terms of working around with, with, with the teams. It’s, it’s extremely important to have, those relationships because then we see value in that. And I, I believe that exclusivity gives us edge over getting a very specific offer

Bill: and a brand. Yeah. That’s great. So what, what can you share about results?

Is there anything you can share? I know a lot of times that’s very sensitive, but is there anything you can share about the results of the program and how it’s, you know what, yeah. So I could

Deepak: say, we do, we do have a few numbers that we can share, so. We, we have 2.4 million customers into the program.

that’s a huge, majority of the motorist population in the UAE, and a and, and more than 50%, and I cannot say the exact number, but, we have a sizeable amount of customers who are active on the program, and that’s a huge, huge active. When we say active, we actually say active on the mobile application, which basically means they’re actually active in the program.

we have, the bakery and barista business of the, of, of the C store, which has close to more than 70 kinds of sqs that we brew and bake. So it’s an extremely good spread. As good as, I don’t know, I don’t want to name any brands, but any, any bakery and barista brands that are prominent in the region.

And we are an expansion of, getting more non-fuel business into, into the, into the, company. Yeah. we see a great value of, having a good proposition of non-fuel businesses, which is not just AOG brands, but brands like what is said, burger King on those lines. So there is going to be a lot of expansion on that, and I believe we’ll be, you know, we’ll keep on investing on AI and technology to make, the program more sweeter.

They make, make the program more understandable and comprehend. Comprehend in terms of offerings. And I believe, it’s going to be, you’ll see these changes happening very, very, very, very soon. and the footprint of the gas stations is also going to increase a lot. Oh, good. Okay. there’s a, there’s a major expansion plan on that as well.

Bill: More, more, more of these double decker stores.

Deepak: Mm. Yeah, we, I mean, yes. What I can share is that we are not just looking at gas stations, we are looking at places people can hang out with, right? So it’s going to all go in that kind of a direction. So it is a, it is a very common concept in a, in a, in a market like Egypt where gas stations have, where people go and hang out, right?

Whatever form factor they may be right now. But when it comes to UAE UAE always does the best. We are the biggest. We are the largest, we are the most fanciest. So yeah, we will look into things like that. so we want the gas station not to be a fueling spot. See, nobody’s happy when they go to a gas station.

They wanna go fuel and get out. Right. Youll make it a reason for people to come and hang out at the place. That is what we are looking at. So it’s going to be, yeah, and and we do, actually one last thing there, which I did not mention was we, we do a lot of EV business, ev recharging business. We have a very good landscape of that.

That is also what we wanna focus on. we, we have about more than 250 charges across, the 500 stations that I spoke about, because there are specific areas where recharges can be used to juice up. you may not have it in residential areas, but more on the highways. So that’s a big business that we want to expand on because we see a lot of, you know, the adoption of customers, which who are non-fuel.

Who are on, non-fuel coming into the gas station, and that is also a point of process.

Bill: Do you award for the EV Phillips in yes. In the program. Okay. Absolutely.

Deepak: That’s part of the program. Anytime you fuel, anytime you recharge, you, you get the equal number of points. So there is no differentiation between a fuel and a non-fuel customer.

It’s, it’s even, even sweeter when it comes to the proposition in terms of value. fantastic.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. And quick, quick question. Um, how, how do you define active in your business? at least having one transaction in a year. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yep. That’s good. Everybody has a different differe definition for that.

So,

Deepak: yeah, so this has been awesome. We also try to do a little more segmentation on active of, depending on the, you know, kind of business, fuel, car wash, these, so, et cetera. But in general, if we at least have one tri tuning here, that’s an active for us. That’s good. That’s good. So

Bill: just to wrap this up, um.

What can you share about what’s next, what’s coming? You’ve, you’ve hinted at a few things, but anything else that you could add that would be interesting?

Deepak: I think, expansion, and predicting market share. These are the two key elements for us. expansion and non-fuel to be very specific. That’s, that’s going to be a very key, making stations more cooler and sexier.

That’s, another thing. Because you have got a lot of legacy stations as well in different parts of the country. everybody has their way of looking at things. So when you kind of look at better looking stations, we are not just. Changing the look of the stations, we are looking at the quality of services and improving the quality of services as well.

So all of that is on the plans. And we, I mean, it’s an open book when you look at our annual report. yeah. Which is, which is public. So we, we like to invest, we like to do a lot of expansion in more, more regions and geographies.  And that’s also about the plan. It’s not just the ua. And, I, I think we are on the right track to do a lot of it in different parts of, the world.

So you’ll get to see a lot of more surprises of ADOC products across the world.

Bill: Oh, you, you definitely are on the right track. And I, I think it’s, um, I, I won’t say the names, but I can think of a couple. You know, large, well-known fuel retailers that people have always looked at for inspiration. And I think that’s, if not today, very soon, eDoc will be in that group right now where people will be saying like, well, what are they doing?

Because I, I want to do more of that. So you’re already well on your way. Yeah. And um, it’s really impressive. So. Deepak, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And um, I feel like even though we’ve talked for a little while, we’ve only scratched the surface. so maybe one day we can get you to come back and we’ll we can dig into some other topics, but, um, thank you so much and um, yeah, thank you.

Appreciate it was, pleasure talking to you.

Deepak: Thank you so much.

Bill: Absolutely.

Deepak: So,

Bill: yeah, thanks everybody for joining us. Thanks to Paula Thomas and let’s talk loyalty for making all this possible and, Deepak PR from Ed Knock. We’ll see you soon. Thank. All right.

Deepak: Thank you and shout out to Paula. Thank you very much, Paula, for the opportunity.

Bill: That’s right, thanks. Absolutely. All right. Cheers everyone. Bye-Bye bye. Cheers. Bye.