A survey of 1,500 UK motorists has found that 26% have experienced tech issues or outages such as payment failures at petrol stations, with 30% saying they left to buy elsewhere, without completing their purchase.
The study asked about issues surrounding ordering, payments and loyalty cards, and found that 32% of all failures happened during the morning rush hour.
Some 70% of those polled said they wouldn’t shop with the same brand if issues occurred more than once. And, while five minutes was the most common maximum amount of time people said they would wait for an issue to be resolved, 17% of those polled said they would give up and go after just two minutes.
The most common issues reported by drivers were slow payment processing, self-checkout or ordering screens being out of service, and payment terminals not working at all.
Alan Stephenson-Brown, chief executive of Evolve, which commissioned the research and provides internet connectivity to multi-site fuel-retail firms, comments:
“For forecourt operators where speed and convenience are critical, poor connectivity is a customer retention problem hiding in plain sight. Too many are accepting unreliable systems and it’s costing them fuel and on-the-go sales, as well as repeat visits.
“When queues build at the pumps or across forecourt sites and systems go down, customers don’t wait.
“The operators that will win are those investing in robust, reliable connectivity as core infrastructure, rather than treating it as an afterthought.”
