Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Brandon Logsdon, PDI Technologies

PDI Technologies has decades of industry experience, gathering customer data and providing expert consulting to fuel stations for increased efficiency and profitability.

Adapting to new changes in the industry, like electric vehicles (EVs) and sustainability, PDI Technologies has supported clients in their loyalty strategies to attract all kinds of customers — and drivers — to make the most use of their space, bringing shoppers from the fuel/charging stations to inside the convenience stores.

Loyalty360 spoke with Brandon Logsdon, President of Consumer Engagement Solutions at PDI Technologies, about his experience within the loyalty industry, new trends in sustainability, and how brands can leverage data to support customer engagement. Logsdon has over 20 years of customer loyalty experience under his belt, adopting innovative strategies to shape customer loyalty programs for various brands.

Chapters

• 0:04 Intro
• 1:22 Tell us about yourself
• 3:42 Overview of PDI
• 6:45 EVs trend in consumer consciousness
• 12:27 Ecoconsciousness and CSR
• 18:02 EVs in C-Stores impacting customer loyalty
• 22:35 Advice to brands looking to adapt loyalty programs for EV drivers
• 26:18 Additional initiatives PDI is working on
• 29:45 Outro

Transcript

Mark Johnson: 0:04

Good afternoon, good morning. It's Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. I hope everyone is happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of Loyalty Live. In this series we talk the leading agencies, technology providers and consultants, and customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences and enhance engagement. That, most importantly, impact customer loyalty, and today we have the pleasure of speaking with Brandon Logsdon, the president of Consumer Engagement Solutions for PDI Technologies. PDI works with gas stations and C stores to help increase efficiency and profitability by securely connecting data and operations by utilizing customer data.

Mark Johnson: 0:48

PDI helps create better brand relationships with their customers through more personalized convenient store loyalty programs. And today we're going to talk about C stores and what they can expect as consumer interest in EVs, electric vehicles adoption continues to grow and how that can shape customer loyalty programs going forward. Welcome, Brandon, I'm glad you joined us today.

Brandon Logsdon: 1:12

How are you? Thanks, Mark, great to be with you. Love following the work of Loyalty 360. And so it's a real pleasure. We appreciate it.

Mark Johnson: 1:22

We'd like to start these on a more personal level. Would love to know a little bit about you your current role of PDI, maybe your background before PDI?

Brandon Logsdon: 1:30

Sure. So I've been with PDI about five years now. As you mentioned at the intro, I'm responsible for Consumer Engagement Solutions, which is really kind of what we consider front of house operations. PDI has a long, 40 year history in back office and running kind of back up house within C store and petroleum operations. And five years ago PDI acquired a business that I was CEO of, Accentis, and that was PDI's first foray into customer loyalty and loyalty programs, kind of that front of house side. And I had spent 15 years at Accentis leading that business and so I've been in the industry about 20 years Before that started my career in investment banking, quickly realized that I didn't want to be a banker, much preferred technology and high tech and had gone to a couple different startups before eventually landing at Accentis and went to college in Texas.

Brandon Logsdon: 2:30

I'm a proud TCU Hornfrog alum. I work at PDI with a lot of Georgia Bulldogs unfortunately, so I've gotten hazed a fair amount after that national championship bomb blooper whatever you want to call it last year out in California. But I've loved the transition from, I'd say, a small growth company in Accentis to then selling the business to PDI and having the opportunity to really take the growth to the next level. We've been fortunate to acquire 11 businesses in my segment of consumer engagement in the last five years to really build a compelling horizontal solution stack where we can provide some really amazing end-to-end solutions for our customers. But we also work directly with consumers. We operate the two largest consumer programs focused on convenience and petroleum, that being GasBuddy and the Fuel Rewards program, and so it's just been a great journey. We see a lot of, I think, interesting perspectives, as we're kind of B2B to see.

Mark Johnson: 3:42

And for those who may not be familiar with PDI, can you give us a brief overview of the organization, what you do, how you do it and what industry PDI works within?

Brandon Logsdon: 3:52

Sure. So let's kind of start with the core kind of business. On its founding premise, the PDI core business, which was Backoffice, where we're basically an ERP solution running the convenience store for convenience operators and petroleum wholesalers, and over time we've expanded that business to include logistics, so we're tracking trucks from picking up loads of fuel at terminal to delivering those at fueling locations with telematic solutions. As an example, we have added wholesale modules to our core back office solution so that our D store customers or petroleum customers that have C stores can manage the totality their business, whether it's moving fuel and truck loads On the wholesale side or selling fuel to dealers, as well as in the core operations of owning and operating a C store, which includes everything from you know, not only the T log data and all the data that comes into that back office, but of course we have payroll modules and everything that would be needed to operate a C store. So that's kind of one One side of the business.

Brandon Logsdon: 4:58

The side of the business, as I mentioned, that I operate Focuses on engaging consumers and growing the business through loyalty rewards.

Brandon Logsdon: 5:09

We've acquired sustainability solutions so that we can help our customers through the energy transition process that's happening.

Brandon Logsdon: 5:18

As I mentioned, we have 1st party solutions like gas buddy and fuel rewards We've done a lot recently to help our B2B customers, the operators of C stores and major oils better connect with consumers through our gas buddy platform.

Brandon Logsdon: 5:31

So we've got product called loyalty connect, which is a loyalty wallet Inside of gas buddy and so you can connect in and get access to gas buddy consumers and and through our APIs you can.

Brandon Logsdon: 5:42

You can display discounts and rewards as well as acquire consumers in your own program, which is pretty compelling. And then we we we wrap the entire solution, whether it's back office, whether it's loyalty or our payments because we also have AC H payments that we're quite proud of that that we market to consumers Working with our C store customers. But we wrap all that with a security layer and so we have a security solutions group that that's responsible for securitizing all the data in and out of fuel sites, because, as you can imagine, there's 152,000 fueling sites, convenience stores in the US today and and getting make sure that they're strong network connectivity, making sure that PCI compliance, making sure that you know fishing and any other scams that might exist that we're able to defend against and securitize the sites, is really important and so we're really kind of a one stop shop full solution for convenience retailers and petroleum marketers at PDI.

Mark Johnson: 6:45

And, as you know, brands in the fuel convenience retail space have observed a changing customer demographic. There's significant interest in the adoption of electric vehicles. That's increasing. When you look at the trend and the prominence of the these in consumer consciousness, what does that mean to those who run C store retail? Customer loyalty offering, the customer experience offerings.

Brandon Logsdon: 7:13

Yeah, I mean, look, it's something that it's an interesting dynamic. Right, because, as we're all seeing through headlines every day, manufacturing vehicles is really difficult. Right, oftentimes Tesla probably doesn't get get the credit they fully deserve, because we've really seen one ground up the ultimately successful of building electric vehicles at scale. And the reason I think it's important to say that is because they think about the adoption curve and where we are. It's a very unique dynamic.

Brandon Logsdon: 7:43

We as consumers, as business people we've been hearing about the existence of EVs. Right, they're coming, they're relevant, we see them on the road. Now, when you take back and take a step back and you look at the data, we're still really, really early, early in the adoption curve. You know, the global car park is about just over 2% in total EV. Us is about 1.3%. That's end of 2022. Those numbers certainly will be updated at the end of 23 and it'll it'll have grown.

Brandon Logsdon: 8:14

But most predictions say that, you know, 40% of the global car park will be EV by 2040. Right, so we're still more than 20 years away from from crossing the 50% chasm. Most projections today assuming those projections hold, you know, say that'll be some time towards the end of the 2040s before we get to 50% global car park. A flip side of that. Every year there's increasing demand for retail fuel because the car park beyond just what's happening with EVs, with ice vehicles, continues to grow. So you have this interesting juxtaposition that we're living in right now, where there's a lot of ready for planning, right, got to be ready for EV, because you've got this growing emerging market you need to capitalize on. But you also can't turn your back on the bread and butter, your core market right of ice, and so now you have this intersection.

Brandon Logsdon: 9:16

The other thing that we're finding is of people that are now early adopters, buying Tesla's, buying any of the other OEM EVs. They are in a duality hybrid environment, right. So garage door goes up, one ice, one EV, right. So now, even if you think about consumer proposition and how do you think about householding and the dilemma of one spouse might be in an EV, one might be in an ice, or maybe the next day they switch keys, right, and so in the market, those are some of the data points and dynamics that are then driving key decisions. So now, if you're a C store operator, right, and you're thinking about what do I wanna do relative to, you know EV adoption. How long should I be right? What's the right way to cultivate a consumer relationship, as they are now looking for somewhere to charge and come inside and spend a few minutes while that car charges?

Brandon Logsdon: 10:19

Which brings me to another interesting point, which is time to charge. Right, you have a market to date relative to out-of-home charging that's been built around the supposition that when you plug a car in to fuel up on electrons it's a 30 minute or more experience, right? So if you're using a supercharger could be 30 minutes to get that 80% charge that we've all read about and those that drive EVs have seen. If you're using a slow charger, it could be six to eight or more hours right, to go from zero to a reasonable charge amount. And so the markets kind of conditioned themselves and said, okay, well, we're gonna put charge units outside of C store, we're gonna put it at longer dwell time places like grocery stores, shopping malls, movie theaters, office parks, and I think there's a space and a place for that, and naturally, given the correlation between current charge time, that makes a lot of sense.

Brandon Logsdon: 11:21

But all the technology pundits are pointing to the fact that time to charge is gonna dramatically come down based on battery tech and charge tech, and most every article you're reading now says there's a space and place in the foreseeable future where time to charge for supercharging will be under 10 minutes. Long Charge will still be in the hours, but they're gonna get the supercharging down to sub 10 minutes and many people predict maybe even three or four minutes not too dissimilar to what it takes to fuel an ICE vehicle today. And so that's one interesting dynamic is you've got early adoption and you've got this idea that we really need to be planning for future tense as much as we do current tense. Right, and how you think about allocating space and investing in tech, investing in loyalty solutions, reward solutions for that EV driver. And then you have to think about how do you balance that against the duality between ICE and EV.

Mark Johnson: 12:27

Ecoconsciousness and corporate social responsibility trends have made an impact on multiple industries, which includes expansion of EVs into the C-store and community industry. What are some of the challenges you see for C-stores as a result? Are they prepared to meet the customer expectations around sustainability? Is that something that you're seeing?

Brandon Logsdon: 12:49

Well, I think the good news. But if you're a C-store operator, I think some of the remedy right, some of what you would want to have to appeal now to the EV customer. It's not net new thinking in the industry, right. The industry, meaning convenience, has been moving towards more of a fresh food offering to better compete with QSR and some of the other competitive forces that exist in the market today, certainly in the US, and so most C-stores are already thinking about that from a journey-based perspective. Now I think EV becomes an accelerant right, because if you're looking to now appeal to that EV user, you want probably two things you want to increase your product and assortment and be thinking about how do you deal with a consumer today that has a longer dwell time than what you're accustomed to? Right? And so is that creating space for picnic tables outside? Is that making sure you have adequate Wi-Fi? Is that carving out space? You may be doing a little bit of an expansion if your pad allows for it to create some inside seating. I mean, there's an array of options that people are considering, and I think right now, one of the things that C-store operators are being cautious of are some of the statistics I was throwing out earlier is just making sure you don't want to overbuild for today's use case, right, the use case of a 30-minute dwell occasion, because you might wake up two years from now, three years from now, five years from now. That's kind of the range of predictions where people are saying, hey, battery tech's moving quickly, dwell time's gonna decrease as a result of the ability for the EV to take on charge faster. And so there's this kind of, I'd say, balancing act, if you will, of people trying format variations and change assortment, variation and change at their stores, some of which is tied to EV, some of which is just tied to natural competition, and then also thinking about okay, what would the world look like if now we're a three to five minute analogous time period, analogous to an ICE vehicle to fuel up an EV with electrons? What does the pad have to look like? How do I deal with ingress, egress gas pumps currently, and now I have to have a similar array and assortment of charging. Thinking about that 20, 40 time period where about half the car parks about half and half right, and does that mean? And what's the best way to do that?

Brandon Logsdon: 15:31

One of the things obviously putting in charge points benefit is we're not putting tanks in the ground with flammable liquid. So you've got from an EPA zoning deed restriction, you've got that benefit. But, as we also know, we have grid challenges around getting access to enough power and pulling that in the conduit, et cetera. So you've got a lot of dynamics in play relative to how this I think will shake out. And the reality is nobody knows right, nobody knows definitively nimbleness, flexibility, not playing for the puck is now, but trying to figure out what corner it's going to.

Brandon Logsdon: 16:19

Using the hockey analogy, I think that's a great analogy for what the industry is thinking about and what we're trying to do at PDI is we're trying to surround ourselves continually with smart people, ask ourselves the hard questions and have open dialogue with our customers to understand what are they doing and, of what they're doing, what's working, what's not working relative to current adoption.

Brandon Logsdon: 16:44

But then also trying to be really thoughtful about future phase and how can we help our customers be ready for both kind of the charge environment duality of today but probably more importantly, the scale and the opportunity of scale tomorrow in this EV environment, and help people make wise decisions and make sure our technology is equipped to help them manage that duality. So back office, front of house, consumer engagement, but also then the security piece as well, because the charge occasion is a different origin story than fueling. Right, fueling is an origin story that's very much hand-to-hand combat. Ev charging is very much a digital first right and so how consumers will interact with charge points very different than how consumers interact today and if, pretty much spoken, they wanna continue to interact with fuel pumps. Right, digital payments mobile payments at fuel has not taken off the way anyone thought it would right, it's just not at the scale that most people thought it would be, and it will be very different with EV because it is a digital first experience.

Mark Johnson: 18:02

And how will the adoption of EVs into the C-store universe ultimately expand the customer loyalty audience overall?

Brandon Logsdon: 18:09

Yeah. So I think the biggest thing that we see right and kind of our projections and what we're planning for, you know, when OEM ICE vehicle OEM head units started to get smarter and have more capabilities and have touch screens, five, seven, eight, nine years ago, there was this big push from the OEMs to certify to those head units right, so that your app could be published on their screens, et cetera, under the premise that consumers would largely interact with those OEM head units. And what we quickly saw is consumers very much rejected those head units and opted for CarPlay or Android Auto, right. Most people you know, in vehicles where Android Auto or Apple CarPlayer supported use that almost exclusively. Right, and the phone is basically the intelligence in the car for all things related to navigation and music and so on and so forth. As we're seeing, tesla is really the only large scale OEM that has successfully kind of played the game outside of Apple and Android. And now we're seeing, you know, gm recently announcing and some other manufacturers that they are not gonna support CarPlay and they're not gonna support Android Auto in their EVs like they have in their ICE vehicles. So they're kind of going about it, you know, round two can they be successful getting consumers to use their software versus the mobile devices software, and so I think that's one element that we'll have to watch and see. Because if they're successful and if the EV world doesn't follow the ICE world and the real estate in the car is controlled by the OEM and their operating system, then I think that's a different level and type of engagement of how you reach consumers than how you typically have been able to reach them, in spite of the existence of those OEM head units that end up just kind of being dumb devices today in every vehicle but a Tesla. So if OEMs are successful now as a solution provider, right, who's after eyeballs and engagement and awareness? You know that could be a very different ballgame if now you have to certify and be relevant across the spectrum of all OEM head units in the car. So I think that's one of our biggest differences. Let's say one other thing that I think is the differences.

Brandon Logsdon: 20:40

So back to my comment on the fuel pump. You know the C-store industry, but for those retailers that have fresh food and kind of order ahead need, the bulk of the market doesn't have that today. So the C-store industry lacks a true compelling go digital proposition, right, you know, as a loyalty provider, loyalty program provider, we have apps, but one of our biggest challenges is getting consumers to use the app. Why? Because a C-store today most of them don't operate like Starbucks or Dunkin' or any of the other fast food QSRs where you know there's a strong utility to use that app. It's to order, right, and then to go pick up the product, and then what gets integrated is the loyalty and rewards experience, right, you mean, think about airlines, for that matter too. Right, it's not American advantage miles that got the consumer to the American app. It's booking flights, it's looking at, you know, it's managing my trip, and now the fact that my miles get integrated into that. Well then, that becomes a very much a cohesive experience.

Brandon Logsdon: 21:49

The C-store industry has largely lacked that compelling, I have to go. Digital experience EV starts to change that, because if the only way I can authenticate and turn on an EV is through my mobile app, well, now there's a nice tag along right For loyalty and rewards attached to that occasion. That exists in a lot of other channels that this industry C-store and petroleum has been fighting for, and so that'll be another, I'd say, turning point for this industry, because now you get the consumer there digitally for EV and I think you'll start to see a pile on relative to kind of ICE consumers and interaction and transactions, because of just how mind share will change.

Mark Johnson: 22:35

What is one piece of advice you would give to a brand that seeks to adapt and innovate its loyalty program to embrace EV drivers? Are there any quick wins a brand could consider to implement into its current programs?

Brandon Logsdon: 22:49

Well, I think it's. I like the way you set up that question, because you know one of the big challenges that exist in the dynamic between C-stores today and you have, of course, unbranded C-stores. So some C-stores you go to and the brand of the fuel is the same as the brand of the C-store, and then others you go to and there's a C-store brand and there's a fuel brand. Right, one of the major oils could be a Shell, an Exxon, a BP, a Conoco, you name it. Well, that right there creates some channel conflict and confusion for the consumer, right, because there's oftentimes two loyalty programs at a store.

Brandon Logsdon: 23:25

And what's interesting is, you've seen a similar dynamic spawn from early days of EV right. So in the EV arena, on one hand we have brands, whether it be C stores or grocery stores or shopping malls where a charge point may exist, and then you also have duality and multiplicity of the charge point. Right, there's BVGO and there was a company, volta, that Shell has acquired, and there's Electrify America and there's a charging network called Charge Point and there's the Tesla Supercharging Network, and so you already now have this brand dichotomy where, if I'm now a C-store operator and I wanna have a really concise and cohesive offering where everything's integrated. Right, you already now start to see some challenges emerging around one what's the brand of the charging the charge post? Right, that sits at your site. Are you technically integrated into it? Does the consumer have to have a separate app from your store app and your loyalty and rewards app to interact with the charger?

Brandon Logsdon: 24:29

So I'd say number one think about these network dynamics that have significant impact on consumer barriers and confusion. Because, right, I mean Loyalty 360 does this year round looking at programs and who's winning and who's doing better. And every time you look at loyalty success, right, it's always simple, it's always absent a lot of friction, right, it's easy for the consumer to understand and digest and interact with. And every time you insert barriers, right, you gotta download this other thing, do this other thing, whatever it might be, leave the app environment or the digital environment, put data in over here.

Brandon Logsdon: 25:16

That's not integrated to data, all those types of things that sometimes, as solution providers, it's the only way to solve the problem, but it's not optimal for the consumer. And so now's the time because we're not at 50% adoption, we're at 1.3% adoption in the US now's the time to really be thinking about how can we create an environment for the future where we are gonna have some cohesion, consistency and friction reduction in how we deliver our offer to the consumer. That's inclusive now, with everything that we have Today's assortment, our future view of assortment, inclusive of what is going to be a very, very long tail, which is 50 plus years or more, of consumers coming to the convenience store to fuel up with petroleum, coming to the convenience store to fuel up with electrons and who knows what else. Is it hydrogen, is it? You know?

Mark Johnson: 26:18

Brandon, do you have any final thoughts? Closing advice for brands. What additional initiatives are in the works for PDI as well?

Brandon Logsdon: 26:27

Yeah, I mean, look, we feel like in consumer engagement, our portfolio is unique in that we don't come across providers much that have first party data audiences of our size and scale, like Gas Buddy and Fuel Rewards, where we are using our technology to engage millions of consumers every day. Right, that same technology we make available to C-store operators and petroleum wholesalers to run and operate their own white label loyalty programs. And so the way we think about that, you know Silicon Valley would say we're dog-fooding right. Same technology that we're asking retailers to use, we're using for ourselves. And so when we think about consumer engagement, we often think about it through that dog-fooding lens and say, okay, what can we do in, say, now, gas Buddy is an example to try out some of the premise with which we preach, right. So right now we're in the process of doing some refactoring to our Gas Buddy app and capabilities so that it starts to become more than just targeting the fueling customer, but now the recharge customer. Right, we're also doing a lot of work focused on driving consumers. You know, the Gas Buddy program and the Gas Buddy app has been a phenomenal app for 20 years at getting people to go to the pump. How do we get them in the store from that same application to buy convenience items right, which are oftentimes higher margin than fueling items or the fueling occasion.

Brandon Logsdon: 28:06

How do we think about where they go next? Like, we know through our Gas Buddy data that the number one stop that a consumer makes, either proceeding or after a fueling occasion, is a QSR right. So how can we do more with QSR? And how can we take a category that our C-store customers would say is competitive but is that right? Can we make them complimentary right, because maybe they're getting one product at the C-store that they're not able to satisfy at the QSR and vice versa?

Brandon Logsdon: 28:39

And how do you create through data, some narratives that aren't just narratives based on thought leadership but true data driven? And then how do we factor all of that into our solutions that we bring to market? Because we see an opportunity at PDI for first party data to drive our strategy around what works and what doesn't, what's true and what's false, and then as use that to raise tides for the entire industry about where the consumer is going, what they're doing and how they're behaving, because that ultimately needs to be what informs what I do around EV, what I do around assortment right. Let the consumer tell us what the winning strategy is, versus trying to do something, invest a lot of dollars in the absence of that, try to intrude consumer data and then find out it's incongruent with what the consumer wants. And now we spend a bunch of money for not either in technology we develop or programs and investments our customers make.

Mark Johnson: 29:45

Well, brandon thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us. A very interesting discussion around what you're seeing, since you are on the front lines of the C-store industry the fuel industry very unique trends impacting that industry. So thank you very much for sharing.

Brandon Logsdon: 30:01

Well, really appreciate it, Mark. Always great to speak with your audience and thanks a lot.

Mark Johnson: 30:06

We look forward to hearing more from you and your team throughout the remainder of the year. And to everyone else, thank you for taking the time to tune in to Lowell T Live. Make sure you join us back for another edition soon. Until then, have a wonderful day.