Client Success Story: Q Lube

Customer Care Data Warehouse

The Company

Q Lube, a subsidiary of Pennzoil Quaker State operates almost 600 quick oil change centers in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. Jiffy Lube/Q Lube specializes in full service oil changes, which include oil and filter changes, chassis lubrication, checking and filling most engine vital fluids, and checking and inflating the tires.

On October 1, 2002, the acquisition of Pennzoil-Quaker State Company by Shell Oil Products US, an affiliate of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, was completed. Combining Shell's networks and infrastructure and Pennzoil-Quaker State Company's leading motor oil brands, portfolio of car care brands and Jiffy Lube stores, the new company is a leader in the U.S. lubricants and car care business.

The Challenge

Two primary challenges were tackled:

• Q-Lube needed an easy way to collect and integrate PC point-of-sale based information from remote franchise locations with the central corporate systems.
• Large volumes of customer data could not be adequately mined to effectively target promotional offers to specific segments, geographical regions, or stores. This led to marketing inefficiencies, increased sales costs, and lowered customer satisfaction.

The Solution

Initially Spring2 partnered with Q-Lube to implement a strategic systems plan that involved building a wide area network polling system. This system integrated home office and remote n-store systems. Automated nightly polling of each remote franchise integrates customer, financial, and personnel information with the central corporate data store.

Subsequently, Spring2 developed a customer data warehouse and implemented a complete promotional marketing system. This system allowed Q-Lube to profile in multiple customer segments such as loyal, non-loyal, etc. for unique promotional offers. Any combination of these segments can be selected for highly targeted promotions. Additionally, the promotions can be assigned across multiple organizational levels such as region, market/district level, and/or down to the store level. All of this information is presented in a graphical hierarchy that makes market and customer selection as easy as clicking with the mouse.

As an example, management may select the "loyal" segment to get one offer while the "non-loyal" segment may get another; and management can graphically select a region in the North East, a district in the South, and a specific store in the West to test this offer. Promotional materials are viewed and edited on-line by management, and a mailing file is automatically generated for each customer.

The Technologies

• Windows NT servers with Windows workstations
• Microsoft Exchange for corporate e-mail and communications.
• Xcellenet for remote-to-host automated polling.
• Microsoft SQL Server to mirror an AS-400 customer database.
• Customer data is mined with using SQL stored procedures and Business Objects front ends.
• The front-end marketing promotion application is developed in Visual Basic.

The Results

• Efficient operation through automated franchise polling and centralized corporate data.
• Estimated savings of millions of dollars per year.
• Lower costs to reach customers.
• Higher prospecting rates.
• Higher customer satisfaction.
• Higher profitability.