I did my internship at HPCL in Chandigarh. My role was in the department of Automation where my task was to handle the grievances of the dealers and be on field visits to achieve this main objective. Usually, most of the candidates avoid on field jobs in their internships but in my point of view, it is very difficult to understand the crux of the situation unless you don’t step down in the market to know what the consumer behavior or how trends are!
My internship project revolved around understanding the mechanism of automation and its importance to the company. It involves understanding the automation process, its benefits to dealers, staff and customers. This will help fleet owners who are concerned over theft, besides being a convenience. The system will not allow a driver to divert fuel from the vehicle’s fuel tank to a jerrycan, for instance.
The main objective of Retail Automation is Customer Relationship Management. Manual intervention is eliminated, and speed of transaction & operations is increased, resulting in a Quick Fill Experience. This strengthens the ‘Club HP’ brand image which is based on Quality & Quantity (Q&Q), Customer care and Vehicle care. These automated outlets have been branded "e-fuel stations". The system benefits all the stakeholders. It provides transparency and control of all facets of Retail Outlet operations and the database generated reinforces control and analysis of the outlet performance.
As an intern, I learnt to talk to the vendors, understanding their problems about the spare parts and any other important issues related to inventory they faced and solving them further led to an enhancement in the customer experience. Also, my main task was to address the grievances that many of the dealers face on the retail outlets. The nature of grievances was low, moderate and of high sensitivity. Grievance Handling at a retail outlet if one of the main components of the automation procedure since the technology is new, so it was extremely important to achieve our main objective.
My project, that is, Retail Marketing with Full Automation has given me an exposure about following up with the vendors regarding the site being taken online/ automated, going on site visits and understanding what all the automation process is about and understanding site acceptance test requirements with respect to automation. All this has helped me in getting out of my comfort zone and has simultaneously made me aware of how the automation department of the company works.
Further, my mentors also taught me about the various parts used in the automation process, the complaint management portal which is useful for the distributors in knowing where the automation lags behind in their sites or their retail outlets.
I was also taught how they addressed the dealers’ queries and what all steps were taken to ensure that at the same time we satisfy the dealer’s request and complete our target of making the maximum retail outlets automated, this can be considered a major learning since in marketing. For HPCL, it is important to keep the processes simple for the dealers because only if the dealer is satisfied, they will further put in efforts to make the customers happy which is an important objective as a lot of sales depends on that.
Also, learning about a technology that is completely new to the market especially in case of petroleum industry was a great experience since that taught me what technological and innovative changes have been introduced in this sector.
Lastly, I also observed that when you are working in a particular department, you have to coordinate with the back-end staff so that they can ease out the processes for you and not only the back-end staff but also the vendors, contractors in this case but whatever parties without whom your work cannot be completed, it is extremely essential to keep up with their adjustments.
