Shell’s immersive experience concept to fuel customer engagement

Making convenience stores even more convenient

Here’s a glimpse into what a future customer experience may look like at a Shell convenience store (c-store): You’re commuting to work and are two miles away from the c-store where you often get gas. Your c-store mobile app asks you whether you will stop there to fill up and purchase the same coffee you usually get. You confirm, and when you arrive your coffee is hot and ready to go. As you check out, your app flashes an AI-generated personalized offer—a discount on your next fuel purchase for adding a snack to your cart.

With growing customer interest in mobile ordering and immersive experiences such as extended reality, Shell is exploring ways to use such capabilities to engage c-store customers and serve their needs more effectively. This can in turn increase foot traffic into stores and boost sales. More broadly, Shell seeks to reimagine its network of c-stores and be a leading innovator with the application of AI, metaverse, and other cutting-edge technologies.

Shell is not alone in its ambitions.

The concept: Road trip relay

Shell and Accenture collaborated to develop a new customer experience concept for the hundreds of wholesalers responsible for Shell’s 14,000 North American retail locations. The goal was to leverage AI and extended reality to show Shell’s wholesalers how they can potentially transform the customer lifecycle and their businesses while staying true to Shell’s brand and values.

After several collaborative concept development workshops, Shell selected a five-minute virtual reality experience called “Road Trip Relay.” Picture this: Four friends on a road-trip pull up to a Shell c-store to refuel. AI-generated virtual humans greet the driver and three passengers on their c-store mobile apps, guiding them through various experiences. The driver pays for the fuel with the app, which asks trivia questions while they wait. Passengers enter the c-store—which has an attractive, futuristic design—to pick up mobile-pre-ordered tacos and coffee, earn personalized rewards, and participate in an augmented reality scavenger hunt.

Shell, working with multiple metaverse companies, created Road Trip Relay in just a few months. Shell introduced and tested the experience with more than 500 individual wholesalers at Shell’s National Conference and Brand Experience to overwhelmingly positive feedback. At the end of the conference, attendees voted Road Trip Relay their favorite exhibit.

Reinventing convenience

Road Trip Relay positions Shell in the vanguard of immersive c-store customer experiences by demonstrating the look, feel and function of encounters that can be built in the future. Shell can use the concept not only in c-store operations, but also for employee training and events.  

Road Trip Relay offered Shell’s wholesalers an education about AI and metaverse technologies, inspiring them to collaborate with Shell to transform customer engagement. Looking ahead, Shell plans to expand on the innovative ideas in Road Trip Relay to fuel the future of immersive c-stores that drivers love to visit. 

* Source: Accenture research

Disclaimer: The ideas or use of technology in this Client Case Summary are in part aspirational goals of Equilon Enterprises LLC dba Shell Oil Products US and should not be held as a guarantee that such technology or ideas expressed in this Client Case Study will be implemented in the form described in this Client Case Study.