Maximizing Customer Retention & Engagement with AI-Driven Journeys for a Leading Industrial Lubricant Manufacturer
Customer since
2024
Region
AMER
Industry
Technology
Key use cases
Customer profile unification
30%
Increase in customer
retention through
AI-powered workflows
Built 2M
Prospect database with 50K registered users
60%
Reduction in manual effort via automated journeys
A leading national lubricant manufacturer with a wide B2B and B2C presence across retail outlets, authorized service centers, and large commercial buyers. The brand has built a legacy reputation and maintains a robust pan-national distribution network, serving diverse customer segments ranging from individual consumers to large commercial enterprises.
Business Challenges
Despite being a trusted brand since 1920, the company faced growing competition and several critical engagement and operational roadblocks:
- No direct engagement with key influencers like mechanics, who drove over 60% of lubricant purchase decisions
- Transactional mechanic relationships with no purchase tracking, leading to a lack of behavioral insights
- Offline schemes with zero data capture, resulting in high spend but no visibility into ROI or customer trends
- Fragmented customer data across service centers, retailers, and POS systems
- No unified customer view, especially in the after-sales ecosystem
- Manual and non-contextual engagement, causing low retention and weak brand connection
- Lack of automation and predictive intelligence to drive targeted campaigns
These gaps created major blind spots in customer and influencer understanding, limiting the brand’s ability to deliver personalized, high-impact engagement across B2B and B2C channels.
Solution Provided by FirstHive
To address these challenges, the company partnered with FirstHive to launch a DigitalFirst Engagement Program aimed at building direct relationships with end customers and mechanics. The goal was to understand buying patterns, predict sales, and deliver personalized journeys with timely nudges on preferred channels.
FirstHive deployed its AI-powered CDP along with the Loyalty Module, connecting key input sources like the website, mobile app, CRM, customer care, POS, SMS, and WhatsApp. This enabled the platform to:
- Create unified customer and mechanic identities across channels
- Stitch identities at interaction, channel, and enterprise levels to build a single customer view
- Automate lifecycle stages like acquisition, engagement, gratification, and redemption
- Use AI for segmentation and journey mapping based on service history and behavioral signals
- Trigger real-time, personalized nudges through preferred communication channels
- Enable marketers to run cross-channel campaigns without engineering support
This transformed fragmented touchpoints into a connected, intelligent engagement ecosystem, driving stronger loyalty and marketing performance.
Implementation Overview
The implementation was designed for comprehensive coverage across all customer touchpoints while ensuring rapid deployment:
- Channels Activated: SMS, WhatsApp, email, and in-app notifications
- Integrated Sources: POS data, loyalty systems, CRM, service logs
- Systems Connected: Marketing automation platforms, loyalty modules, and API—based ingestion from retail and service databases
- Time to Go-Live: 8 weeks including data onboarding and activation
Business Impact
The transformation delivered measurable results across customer engagement and business performance, building a database of 2 million prospects and 50,000 registered users in 24 months with 50% active mechanics.
Key Results
- Customer Retention & Engagement: 30% increase in retention through contextual reminders and smart workflows; 25% growth in repeat purchases via AI-powered loyalty nudges; geo-targeted activation boosted food delivery fleet lubricant purchases by 17,000 litres
- Operational Efficiency: 60% drop in manual effort through automated AI-driven journeys; reduced churn via early-warning insights; enabled real-time bonus schemes and QR-code product verification for authenticity
- Adoption Impact: Mechanic scans lubricant product every 12 seconds, reflecting broad platform adoption
By deploying FirstHive's CDP and AI capabilities, this industrial brand successfully unlocked the power of data-driven marketing, breaking down operational silos and elevating engagement quality across their entire value chain. The platform's ability to activate first-party data transformed customer lifecycle management from a cost center into a strategic growth lever, positioning the company for sustained competitive advantage in an increasingly digital marketplace.