Hostage Customers

by CHRIS RIVARD :: SEP 6, 2006 :: COMMENTS (1)

I was rushing out for lunch yesterday and stopped to get gas at the station right around the corner from the office. I swiped my card and pulled the pump off of the holster, opened the gas cap and waited to pull the trigger. Click, click, click.

I looked back over to the LCD that was now prompting me to answer whether or not I wanted a car wash. Yes or no. In this situation, the only choice that I have is to accept or decline the car wash. If I refuse to play ball, I can’t get gas.

There really isn’t any choice. Imagine if you took your significant other out to dinner and the first thing the waiter said to you was, “if you like the flatware, we have special pricing on a setting for four reasonably priced at $34.99, would you like me add it to your bill?”. Your derision may exceed your hunger for a moment as your ponder this extremely disruptive experience.

• How do we classify these experiences?
• Are they all bad?
• Do we ever wish we had more of them?
• What is the advantage to the retailer to create this scenario?
• Are there any negative consequences to forcing a consumer into a decision tree?
• What are the consumer’s expectations and how is the retailer matching the consumers mental model of the experience?

Retailers may see these interactions in any number of ways, such as:

• The packaged experience - ex. “Liked the hotel bed? Buy it online!”
• A service to the consumer - ex. “Getting an oil change? Flush your radiator!”
• An up-sell opportunity - ex. “Buying a consumer tool? Aren’t you a professional?”

We are presented with these situations on a daily basis. Let’s zoom in on this simple transaction and think about how this experience could be improved so that a customer would be inclined to purchase the car wash and at the same time not find the experience disruptive.

As gasoline is a commodity, the experience of filling up with gas has been commoditized and as a result, little emphasis has been placed on the consumer’s experience. Why bother? In a society built around travel by cars that run on one fuel, everyone needs gas. At the other end of the spectrum are services, in which competition is fierce.

Post Purchase
The car wash offer could be offered after the gas is purchased, prior to printing the receipt. The total could be presented with the car wash price included and the consumer could choose to decline the car wash and lower the total purchase price. Gas stations could certainly sell more car washes this way, but most likely as a result of the consumer’s confusion at the total purchase price. Not a great way to build a loyal consumer base.

The Car Wash Button
The entire LCD panel display could be redesigned so that consumer could choose to add services to their gas purchase – a basic car wash, a newspaper, fuzzy dice, etc. This solution doesn’t scale very well as the services could eventually outnumber the physical space for option buttons. Also, the significant cost to redesign and build the display, software, etc. borders on prohibitive.

Loyal Customer Car Wash
The retailer could offer the car wash as a reward for purchasing gas at the same location. Every fifty gallons of gas purchased entitles the consumer to a free basic car wash that the consumer could pay to upgrade for a more expensive wash.

Sweeps Car Wash
Consumers could be randomly selected to receive a car wash. This could be combined with the post purchase offer. As consumers become accustomed to driving a newly washed car out of the gas station, they may be more inclined to pay the extra five dollars when they don’t receive the basic free wash. The retailer is in fact giving something away for free in the hopes that eventually the consumer will decide that they cannot live without a sparkling clean car. This seems like a gamble and begs the question, what is the value of a car wash? and could I live without one? Basic behavioral psychology says this will increase the chances the customer will return – the intermittent reward.

Personalized Offers
There are gas stations that offer a key fob that can be swiped to pay for gas or other services. The card or key fob is loaded like a cash card and then drawn down. The key fob offers the added benefit of allowing retailers to gather data on consumer purchases and personalize services or products based on consumer behavior, there are some distinct advantages to this level of personalization.

Retailers could track the number of gallons purchased and credit a car wash or other service based on the amount spent. The down side of the key fob is that the consumer is buying into the service and limiting the gas stations where they can buy gas with the key fob. Do the benefits to the consumer outweigh the limited choices of where to buy gas?

Do any of these real world experiences translate to digital products or websites? The most important thing to note is that while digital experiences rarely hold consumers hostage there are many examples of hostage situations, such as modal dialogs, interstitial pages during transactions, and the new light-box that seems to be gaining in popularity. It is important to remember that a desktop application can be closed, a new link clicked, the web browser closed. Good interfaces don’t hold people hostage, they allow users to navigate with confidence and provide contextual information that provides clues to what the user will find after clicking a navigation element.

Conclusion
The examples above offer just a few different scenarios that would allow retailers to make use of their car wash facilities and allow consumers to choose whether or not to purchase additional services when filling up with gas. Holding customers hostage and forcing them into a decision tree is a stopgap solution that obscures a problem whose solution hasn’t been adequately explored.

In a quick poll of the office at Clearwired, each of us had at one time purchased a car wash when prompted prior to filling up with gas. In the end, that may be all it takes for the program to be a success in the eyes of the retailer. If one of us purchases a car wash once per year, the program has succeeded financially. Is this experience really building brand loyalty and what of the disruptive experience of being forced into a decision tree at the hands of the retailer? Seems like a missed opportunity for most gas stations to separate themselves from the pack and incorporate a creative solution to improve their customers experience.

So what is an example of your best experience of getting your car washed and filling up the tank?

tags: CUSTOMER SERVICE, INTERACTION DESIGN, USER EXPERIENCE

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