In a market with high use of smartphones but still, in the early stages of adopting electronic wallets and QR payments, YPF wanted to connect with customers to facilitate a memorable experience on the move and strengthen its retail business. None of its competitors were offering a similar solution.

With advances in digital technology continually redefining what customers can expect, YPF needed to generate greater value from each customer interaction through the effective use of technology and analysis of data. In order to do so, YPF needed to complete an internal transformation by becoming more agile and comfortable with change and increasing the emphasis placed on customer engagement and service excellence.

The new digital ecosystem needed to enable the physical and digital worlds to connect and form a single, easily accessible point for customers and employees, particularly those using gas stations. YPF focused on maximizing convenience and removing barriers to improve their users’ experience. The solutions aimed to consider all aspects of the gas station experience – the weather, ergonomics, materials and textures, sounds and smells, distance traveled, and more – to ensure no detail of the customer or employee experience was left unimproved.

Our challenge was to connect people and craft memorable experiences by leveraging technology to create a simple, end-to-end solution. However, dated processes and operations made this more challenging. As a solution, we came up with two different approaches that could work seamlessly to reimagine the overall YPF experience: one for clients and one for YPF collaborators.

In order to create these solutions, we worked with three areas of the organization: business, technology, and retail experience. We conducted research and observation of industry case studies and envisioned a framework that enabled the organization to develop a holistic understanding of its current situation and how the dynamics of collaboration and co-creation across departments would lead to success. A vision for the program was defined, leading to the definition of business initiatives that would help the company meet its stated objectives. Then, we got to work on the agile execution of these initiatives.

We decided to tackle a heterogeneous tech stack and come up with an innovative solution for the industry: an agnostic cloud layer integrating every provider in the ecosystem. This breakthrough boosted the brand’s vision of providing state-of-the-art product innovation while delivering a frictionless experience across multiple touchpoints.

We designed an agile and data-driven digital ecosystem that was able to manage and interact with YPF services, facilitate frictionless payments, integrate with the loyalty program, and more. The solution contained a pre-order solution, control panel for tracking, duty cycle performance indicator, information panels, and RFID for employee identification and operations tracking.

The apps improved the customer experience by reducing the time spent in gas stations by 35% and allowing customers to access personalized offers and benefits. As a result, YPF had a 100% increase in subscribers to its loyalty program, and in three years, an 80% increase in the number of active members in its loyalty program (called “Serviclub”). YPF was able to unify and connect all of its gas stations (as well as its third-party gas stations) via one integration platform, which brought more transparency and traceability to employees’ work, sales results, and customer feedback. This made it easier for the company to track employee performance, and map and reward great achievements accordingly. The streamlining of processes brought on by the app meant employees could spend more time interacting with customers instead of dealing with back-end processes, increasing job satisfaction and engagement while simultaneously improving the customer experience.

The implementation of these solutions kicked off a complete transformation of the purchase experience in gas stations. Through this project, the company optimized its operations and improved its customer relationships. The YPF APP adoption was so successful that it became the second most used digital wallet in Argentina and the best-rated one in stores.

Among the most important business results were:

35% reduction in service times at gas stations

60% average increase in digital customers’ consumption of liters

100% increase in Loyalty Program subscribers, and 80% increase in active users of the Loyalty Program in three years

100% savings in the issuance and distribution of Loyalty Program cards

100% increase in continuous and atomized feedback on C-SAT Surveys in transactions

50% savings in SMS and Call Center customer inquiries

60% of payments are made through the YPF app, cutting down on time spent processing payments

65% reduction in commissions affiliated with payment transactions

Unification and connection of all gas stations (and third-party gas stations) via one integration platform, which enabled the collection of unified app reports; the information derived unlocked improved company decision-making and more effective marketing campaigns

Achievement of 4.8 rating in the App Store