Refueling your car can become quite boring and mundane task. Especially when going on a long and tiring trip, you might need something more entertaining to do at a gas station. So, in order to make the waiting for your car-tank to fill-up a more enjoyable experience, British Petroleum has announced this week that it’s introducing new, highly interactive fuel pumps at various locations around New York and Chicago. BP is a world-leading producer of oil and gas, it annually produces energy sufficient enough to light nearly the entire country for a year and over the past 10 years, the company has invested over $90 billion in the U.S. itself – more than any other energy company. Now, they have decided to invest in making the customer experience at fuel pumps more worthwhile.
The global fuel giants have just started installing futuristic ‘Personality Pumps’ at service stations in the U.S. – they are technologically advanced pumps, with a series of unique interactive and entertainment features. These pumps are affectionately dubbed “Miles”, as they use a proprietary interactive technology to audibly greet you and engage you in a completely new fueling experience. While filling up you are provided with multiple ways of avoiding boredom — you can select music on Pandora (and have a little dance), record a video e-card you can then share on social media sites, or you can test your knowledge with music trivia — at locations in Chicago, Naperville and Brooklyn, NY until February 14th. While you wait for your card to get its drink, Miles processes all responses in real-time through a touchscreen tablet.
Miles’ features were developed through a partnership with The Onion and Pandora. And while Pandora provides the music services, the satire site has cast Miles as the main character in ’One Woman’s Unexpected Love Story’, during which the driver “falls in love” with the 4,800-pound, big and charming gas pump who has a great job and is a pop-culture geek. To top it all up, after using Miles to get gas, drivers can send themselves a text message with the content created, a link to the Pandora station they chose and a special return offer.
“The BP Personality Pump is one of the biggest innovations at U.S. retail fueling stations in many years,” said Donna Sanker, Chief Marketing Officer of BP Fuels North America. “We believe this technology could change the way people think about the typical fill-up and give consumers another reason to visit our stations.”
After testing the new, and quite exciting, pump technology for three months, BP will determine whether to make Miles available elsewhere following the pilot program and based on consumer response.
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