Matthias Vanhoecke

With the Your TE app, Total Energies transitioned from a lot of push- to pull-communication. The result? 98% adoption! How did they manage that? Matthias Vanhoecke shares the ingredients of their success formula.

Who? 

• Matthias Vanhoecke

• E-project Manager in the marketing department of Total Energies

• SPOC for the Your TE app, powered by Spencer

“Internal communication was a major stumbling block for us in the past,” says Matthias. “There's a lot of information to share with the stations, but access to digital resources is limited.” Often, there's only one computer in a gas station, and not all employees have their own professional email address. 

Moreover, their employee target group includes a variety of profiles: employees working in a gas station managed directly by Total Energies and thus on their payroll, as well as independent franchisees and their staff. “The latter group was very hard to reach in the past, but now we also have very high adoption rates with our app.”

Indeed, the Your TE app that Total Energies rolled out for gas station employees is a tremendous success, with adoption rates of over 90%. What are the ingredients of this success formula?

Segmentation

Not all information is relevant to everyone, so articles are only published for the target group for which they are useful. Additionally, each article also indicates the target audience for which it is published.

Clear communication about communication

Previously, a lot was communicated via email, which overwhelmed station managers with information. “When Your TE started, it was clearly communicated about which information would be shared through which channels, and from when certain information would only be available via Your TE,” says Matthias. 

Making clear choices

By communicating as much as possible through Your TE, and sharing information that people don’t want to miss, it’s non-optional: as an employee of a Total Energies gas station, you must have the app, it’s that simple. 

This conviction is now fully established, and the regional managers who visit the stations are the ambassadors. This way, Your TE achieves 100% adoption rates among station managers and over 90% among station staff.

A strong project team

“With other clients, we sometimes see that the person responsible for internal communication acts as a kind of conduit, posting information in the app that comes from various departments,” says Tom Segers, Managing Director of Spencer. “This quickly makes internal communication a bottleneck.” 

Not so at Total Energies. While Matthias is the SPOC towards Spencer and the final responsible, he has a strong project team behind him with key users from various departments who post for their department, like HR or safety. “I’m mainly their point of contact and coach,” says Matthias.

Listen to your end user

The project team continues to think about ways to increase the app’s value and listens closely to the end user. “We’re currently looking at whether Your TE can play a role in the emergency procedure during a fire or serious incident at a station,” says Matthias. 

Even in communication about drier topics like safety, they take their end users into account. “We regularly share safety incidents in stations and what to learn from them,” says Matthias. “But we also hold a monthly safety quiz where employees can win movie tickets. That keeps it fun.”