Consumers fill up on satisfaction at NPD service stations

NPD wins Canstar Blue’s award for Most Satisfied Customers | Service Stations for the second year in a row.

Despite the rise of electric cars, filling up with petrol will remain part of motorists’ lives for the foreseeable future. And even once we’re all in self-driving Teslas, we’ll still need somewhere to recharge our batteries, literally and figuratively, with a coffee or a sneaky treat.

To meet that need, service stations will remain dotted along our roads, providing places to stop, refuel, and refresh. So as part of our mission to inform consumers of the best NZ has to offer, Canstar Blue canvassed the opinions of 1849 New Zealanders who had recently filled up their cars at a service station, across a range of categories, to measure and track their satisfaction.

To decide which service station brand offers the best level of customer satisfaction, each was rated across the following categories:

• Overall Satisfaction
• Appearance and Cleanliness of Station
• Convenience
• Facilities
• Price of Petrol
• Range of Other Items For Sale
• Service

Coming out on top and winning Canstar Blue’s award for Most Satisfied Customers | Service Stations is NPD. The award makes it back-to-back wins for NPD, which is the only service station in Canstar Blue’s survey to earn Five Stars for Overall Satisfaction; NPD also takes out Five Stars for Appearance and Cleanliness, Convenience, and Four Stars for Price.

Placed second, Waitomo is the only recipient of Five Stars for Price, while Gull, in third, has a sweep of Four-Star ratings, including for Overall Satisfaction, Appearance and Cleanliness, and Price.

What Customers Want

Although the cost of petrol is a perennial bugbear for most Kiwis – with price fluctuations always making headlines, whether up or down – it’s a surprise to see that price isn’t the sole factor driving customer satisfaction. In this year’s survey, respondents say they value the appearance and cleanliness of service stations fractionally more than their prices. Both qualities sit atop our drivers of satisfaction table with 31%, but before rounding Appearance and Cleanliness (30.7%) just pips Price (30.6%). Overall, the main drivers of satisfaction:

Servicing our Service Station Needs

What is clear from the 0% statistic above is that as service station customers, we don’t really care much about the range of other goods they sell. But that doesn’t mean we don’t buy other goods while filling up.

Of those respondents in our survey, 14% say they regularly purchase food and drinks and nearly one in ten say they choose their service station because of the refreshments on offer.

But, ultimately, it’s price that’s driving our choice of service station. Approximately half of those in our survey (47%) say their choice of where to refuel is either driven by the discounts on offer, or the ability to use their supermarket loyalty/discount card.

Until now, only South Island residents have been able to take advantage of NPD’s great fuel savings, and the friendly local service that comes from a 100% New Zealand-owned family business. However, it’s good news for North Islanders, for as part of NPD’s expansion plans, it’s opening six new self-service sites up north: in Hamilton, Porirua near Wellington, Palmerston North, New Plymouth and two in Auckland.

In the South Island, NPD already has 70 sites, but is planning for a further 16 to be completed over the next 12 months.

So, wherever you are in New Zealand, if you’re driven by a desire for customer satisfaction, you’ll soon be able to steer yourself to one of Canstar Blue’s award-winning service stations: your local NPD!