Ampol is an independent Australian company and the nation’s leader in transport energy.

Seeking to improve customer experience and employee engagement across the country, Ampol requested assistance creating a customer experience campaign aligned with its newly introduced service strategy The Ampol Way.

With a particular interest in encouraging warm, friendly and personable engagement between team members and customers, Ampol turned to The Being Group for strategic consultation and recommendations.

As this is an internal Ampol campaign, this folio features a limited selection of content. 

Strategy

Our consultants conducted interviews at Ampol retail sites across Greater Sydney with site managers and team members. In addition, The Being Group received responses through an online survey sent to site managers.

Research revealed shared employee sentiment on a number of topics. From the findings, conclusions were drawn across three levels: company, site manager and customer-facing.

We suggested that team members, site managers and business managers should develop a deep understanding of what good service is, and what stimulates positive customer experiences, through formal and informal training, ongoing coaching, e-learning and constant in-store reminders.

Communication

A key theme between site managers that maintained high team morale was the importance placed on communication. As such, the customer experience campaign was identified as one part of a broader approach to improving the customer experience Australia-wide.

The Pygmalion Effect is a basic psychological principle that says if you treat people as if they are the way you would like them to be, they are more likely to become that person. The employee-facing campaign was designed to communicate trust and acknowledgement of team members’ ability to multi-task and perform important functions, through the diverse hero campaign.

Aligned with the Ampol tagline, the main slogan captured the intent of the campaign in concise terms. Key messages touched on the benefits of a great customer experience, the need to understand what customers value, how to reduce the risk of unhappy customers, and the ten Customer Drivers — also known as Ampol’s minimum standards of service.

The campaign also created the desire to be better, through motivation at the level of the team member. Comparisons with role models and nudge theory concepts were employed to make the “basics” an absolute minimum, and an exceptional customer experience something to aspire to.

Video and Photography

Shot at The Being Group’s internal studio, actors and real Ampol employees were directed under the guidance of the cinematographer and creative director, who helped them visualise the videos and collateral that would be created.

With the intent to splice engaging, instructional video content into the e-learning module, a script was developed for three actors to perform as Ampol employees. The script diverged from the standard method of listing instructional content, with actors bouncing dialogue off one another in a more informal way. Drivers were peppered with subtle jokes and small encouragements to lean into the character set-up of one site manager and two team members.

To showcase key features of each Ampol retail site, an illustration concept was woven into the script, to be imagined by talent during production, and animated in post-production. Providing the actors with real props, such as point of sale stands and cleaning products, helped ground each scene and lay the framework for the animation to come.

This unique graphic element served a variety of purposes; it helped cement the Ampol look and feel, it added dynamism and interest to a video that could have been shot in a more traditional style, and it brought a safer approach to shooting during a pandemic.

E-learning

Informed by the ten Customer Drivers outlined in the instructional videos, the customer experience e-learning module mixed a range of simple activities — including drag and drop and multiple choice functions — to engage employees of all language levels.

The core narrative of the module promoted the value Ampol places in its employees and the important work they do. It also cemented that the customer experience is an essential part of Ampol work, and has wide-ranging benefits for everyone. After establishing the minimum requirements of the Customer Drivers, it encouraged viewers to go one step beyond good service — to deliver exceptional service.

Collateral

Campaign collateral highlighted and celebrated the responsibilities employees oversee every day — acknowledging their efforts and thanking them for positive customer outcomes. Accompanying internal documents reiterated the ten Drivers outlined in the e-learning module, to create consistency across all platforms.

An additional campaign component was the distribution of a “thank you” care package. Sent during and after 2021 state lockdowns, the package acknowledged the exceptional work done by employees through incentivised motivation.