Forum

Developing Leaders to Drive Growth at a Regional Energy Company

The Situation

Our client, a third-generation family-owned regional energy company in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, refines and markets finished energy products including gasoline, diesel, home heating fuel, and jet fuel, and also operates a network of convenience stores associated with its gas stations. The company's senior management team set out to reignite profit growth in the Convenience Retail business, which was characterized by lackluster product differentiation and flat sales.

“The impact can be seen in a thousand small changes and a thousand actions. They all add up to a big impact.” —Participating executive

The Solution

Forum partnered with the business to help execute on a strategy to induce customers to shop more frequently, purchase more, purchase only from their convenience stores, and refer others to shop there as well. Our work together included:

• Defining the key drivers of loyalty for target customers and employees, and then building a differentiated experience they would value
• Aligning the senior leadership team and providing it with skills to guide and lead the change effort
• Developing and implementing a balanced scorecard to measure employee, product/service, customer, and business results
• Crafting a management system to support the new customer and employee experience
• Equipping managers and employees with knowledge, skills, and tools by means of training and onsite coaching

The Results

Three years after we deployed our Branded Customer Experience™ initiative in these Convenience Retail sites:

• Same store sales are up 12 percent (in an industry that is struggling for positive growth overall).
• Fuel sales are increasing (while industry fuel sales overall are declining-thus increasing market share in a mature market).
• Employee and customer satisfaction are increasing year over year.
• Customer satisfaction as measured by a third party is substantially higher than the average in the third party's extensive retail customer satisfaction database.

For more information contact Forum.