A few easily accessible reports can help you determine sales, outreach, and marketing strategies to prepare for next winter.
Well, that was a winter! Finally, for the first time in years, most local temperatures averaged well below last year’s and below the region’s 30-year norm. Congratulations on a successful season!
Now, as you take a deep breath and take stock, be sure to take a good look at all the seasonal account data hiding within your enterprise software. Just as a review of your sales and warehoused products will show you what needs to be restocked and what may need to be retired, a review of your customer data will reveal ways to increase customer retention, increase sales, and reduce payment windows. It is all there, if you know where to look.
Clear a Path … to More Automatic Delivery Customers
Reliable deliveries are the mark of a reputable fuel retailer. Deep freezes strain the most accurate K-factor calculations, and smart business owners adjust those figures to account for a well-known fact of human nature: indoor thermostats get set higher as outdoor temperatures drop.
All the same, were automatic delivery customers calling you for emergency deliveries? In mild winters, setting a house at a 6 factor instead of a 5 will not lead to a crisis situation. In extreme temperatures, however, that error multiplies exponentially, creating unhappy customers and late night emergency drops. Dig into customer histories and compare their actual delivery schedule against your K-factor calculations, and adjust accordingly. Consider investing in tank monitors, and providing them as an advanced customer benefit. Some businesses offer the monitors and tracking at no charge, especially to larger customers. Others offer tank monitors as an option, and bill monthly for tracking and maintenance. Either way, the monitoring systems can integrate with your enterprise software and the data can be added to your internal and customer-facing account portals, giving both you and your customer accurate tank readings and reducing the need for emergency deliveries.
Your crew may have worked around the clock to make sure everyone got the fuel and service they needed, but the will-call customer who watched their fuel gauge as they waited for your truck did not see those efforts. They saw delays, and they saw automatic delivery customers getting fuel before them. “Well, yes,” you are thinking, “that’s the whole point of automatic delivery!” Of course it is.
This is the time to remind your will-call customers of the benefits of automatic delivery as well as their concerns last winter even as you made good on your promise to deliver their fuel. Letters, emails, and other communications should discuss the lead time for will-call deliveries, the worries when the order goes in “late,” and your automatic delivery solution. Start these communications in the spring and do not forget to add automatic delivery as a benefit when you promote your budget and pricing programs (see below).
New Customers Offer Insight Into Growth Opportunities
As your business went about diligently delivering fuel and completing service calls, no doubt you picked up many new customers along the way. There are many reasons why a customer leaves a fuel company mid-season, and your new customer intake should attempt to quantify that information. Was there an influx from a specific competitor, possibly one that had recently been acquired by a larger operation? Did these new accounts come in because of your pricing structure or fuel availability, or did they come to you because their previous company performed poorly? This is clearly your company’s point of differentiation, and should be incorporated into your marketing messages.
As you review your new customer enrollments, map out the new locations. Are there clusters of new accounts? Look closely at your share of those areas, and consider targeting a new business campaign to those neighborhoods. You can upload your current customer data to most advertising platforms, and have their algorithms find potential customers who match your customers’ demographics (location, interests, income, and/or house size and value, to name a few).
Learning From Lost Customers
Unfortunately, very few fuel retailers will complete a season without losing some customers. These losses can be as valuable to your company’s future as the customers gained, if you look into the reasons behind the defections.
While there are rarely “exit interviews” when a customer moves on, you will get notified to cancel an automatic delivery or budget plan for anyone who had been enrolled. If this notice comes through, your team should do their best to find out why. Naturally, if it was a price or service issue, they should also attempt to rectify the situation and retain the customer. While it is a long shot, they should also try to find out where the customer is going!
If customers are leaving because of customer service complaints, technician errors, or competitive pricing, your business managers have to look closely and determine what steps need to be taken to staunch the bleeding.
Just as mapping new customers helps identify neighborhoods to target for expansion, mapping lost customers can help identify areas at risk. Has a competitor started encroaching on your service area? Are your drivers seeing one company’s trucks in the area more frequently than in the past? This is a time to compile some research on your competitors: their new customer promotions, ad campaigns, sales outreach, and more. Much of this can easily be found on their website or social media feeds. You may choose to match their pricing and offers, provide “loyalty bonuses” to customers in that area, or create an advertising campaign targeting homeowners searching for these competitors. Long-term customers are bombarded with “new customer offers” from your competitors; let them see a “loyal customer reward” from you in their email or on their next invoice. Uploading customer lists (see above) can help you reach your customers across the web with specific retention campaigns promoting your history and exceptional service.
Service Data
With extended periods of subzero temperatures, it may have felt as if every customer was calling for service. What your service data will show, however, is which customers needed several service calls and return trips. A quick report from your portal dashboard will provide this information, and then help you transfer this data into your lead tracking software.
These customers already turned down your technician’s suggestion to upgrade when the system went down, so you may need to tread softly. Now that the emergencies have passed, the company owner, service manager, or lead sales person should be opening up the conversation about upgrades again, without coming on too strong. However, you can let the homeowner know that you reviewed their history, and you have concerns about the equipment lasting another year. Provide a range of solutions, and offer any financing or rebates available. Would you be willing to amortize the cost of an upgrade for a long-term customer with a stellar payment history?
This is also a time to review which customers needed lesser equipment repairs but were not on a service plan. When you send out your service plan reminders, include personalized letters that review the customer’s service history and how much of their repairs would have been covered by a service plan. Make it easy for them, with a QR code or link that takes them directly to the online contract enrollment module in your customer portal.
Use your portal to support this messaging, with banners promoting upgrades, equipment, and financing. Include similar messages on your printed or digital invoices; and remind all your customers about your equipment and service plan options in newsletters and eblasts.
Billing and Payments
The good news about a winter like this one: your company produced a lot of billing! Deliveries, service calls, emergency replacements – your receivables really added up.
The bad news about a winter like this: customers may be slow to pay. Thirty day payments become 45. Sixty become 90. When the checks finally arrive, you need to wait for the deposit to clear (if you are lucky) before those funds are available to you.
The solution – make it easier for customers to pay more quickly! Start with your payment options. If your company does not have an online payment gateway on its website, you should look into this immediately. This can be done cost effectively with a simple gateway integration with your credit card processing provider, or can be part of a broader customer self-service portal. Either way, you need to keep in mind that more than 90 percent of consumers expect to be able to pay online and will reject companies that do not offer this convenience. Your current customers may be used to sending checks or calling in payments, but they will most certainly appreciate the new service. The online payment option removes a lot of payment delays, especially with customers who previously mailed in checks.
If you already offer online payments, expand your services with credit card storage and automatic payments. You may want to offer customers who opt for automatic payments a small discount as an incentive. The increased cash flow will make up for the discount, as your accounts receivable window shrinks.
Naturally, you will want to promote these new services across your website, social media, customer communications, and on-hold message! Customers can now save time, save postage, and save themselves from worrying about missed payments!
But what about the customers who truly struggled when they needed an extra fuel drop and received the invoice for several hundred dollars. Or those who called for minimum deliveries rather than fills, and who you knew were keeping their thermostats as low as possible. You could probably make a list off the top of your head, but you have the data at your fingertips. Pull the seriously delinquent customers or those with multiple small drops, and, again, have company leadership or account managers call to review the benefits of your budget plan. Mention your policy of giving budget customers on automatic payments the same cents-off early payment discount you offer to customers who pay within 10 days. Open up the conversation about your price protection programs as well. This is not a situation for sales speak. This is your company offering specific solutions to help keep the customer from falling behind.
Staffing
Your team were superheroes throughout the winter. They worked long hours, overnight emergency shifts, and came through in all kinds of weather. You could not have gotten through the season without their extraordinary efforts.
Could you have used a few more on staff? An extra driver to help cut 17-hour shifts to 12? Maybe an additional pair of hands (and ears) for the office to handle the incoming calls? Look at your payroll data, and your overtime costs. Sure, the drivers and technicians love the OT pay, but there are real costs – to their safety, their families, and your customer relationships – when the work day runs well into the night.
You may not want to hire anyone else on a year-round basis, but you can look at professionals who work in “alternate season” industries: construction, summer camps, landscaping, and roofing, to name a few. It could be worthwhile to set up targeted programmatic advertising campaigns in the late summer targeting individuals in these industries or who work at specific business locations. Highlight the seasonal nature of the work you need, and your willingness to bring them back year after year. Amazon, UPS, and department stores do this around the holiday shopping season. There is no reason why you should not do so as well. Your advertising partner can help you with location geofencing and addressable targeting, as well as crafting a message that will attract the people you need.
It is clear that there is a lot to be learned from the winter that was. By pulling a few easily accessible reports from your enterprise software and having an in-depth conversation with your marketing and communications partner, you can set your company up for even greater success next winter, and then take your summer vacation with a clear head!
Richard Rutigliano is President of PriMedia, Inc., an integrated marketing and communications firm specializing in the home energy sector and offering a wide array of SaaS products nationwide. He can be reached at 516-222-2041 or rrutigliano@primediany.com.
