Yesterday marked the second anniversary of fuel-saving discount scheme AA Smartfuel, which has thus far accumulated over 1.6 million unique registered cardholders since its inception in 2011.
In a the press release that commemorated the birthday of the programme, AA said that they had already recorded $98,6 million in fuel savings, and Ian Sutcliffe, managing director of AA Smartfuel, told StopPress that they “should reach the $100 million mark sometime next week”.
In the release, Sutcliffe was quoted saying, “the powerful customer proposition of ‘save money on fuel immediately’, along with the simplicity and flexibility of the programme are key attributes of success to date.”
The simplicity of the programme is, however, open to debate, because the monthly discount cycle can be a little confusing at first. To counter the problem of customer confusion, Sutcliffe says that AA Smartfuel has worked hard to ensure that employees at the point of sale are well trained.
In addition to putting together an operations manual to use during training, AA Smartfuel also recently commissioned South African-born comedian Urzila Carlson to act in an instructional video that was distributed to all the participating service stations.
Sutcliffe says, “The success of the programme really stands as testament to the hard work that BP and Caltex have put into training their staff.”
When questioned on the likelihood of additional service stations joining the programme within the next year, Sutcliffe laughingly says, “A few have picked up the phone and given us a call.” He would not been drawn into dropping any names, instead saying, “We are always looking to work with new companies, and we welcome phone calls.”
And businesses aren’t the only ones who are interested in becoming involved in the programme. Sutcliffe says that in the last month 17,000 new customers registered with the programme and he claims that AA Smarfuel still has “a big job to do in terms of bringing more people on board.”
