A member of the Shell group of companies since 2021, Multi Service Fuel Card has offered essential tools for over-the-road refueling since 1978. The company’s diesel fuel card helps truck fleets and owner-operators keep vehicles on the road and manage expenses with discount prices at over 9,000 truck stops nationwide. Its impact is enhanced by the Multi Service Fuel Card app, which offers features including expense tracking, fraud protection, custom profiles, fuel locator and planner, easy card management, one-time PIN security, and robust reporting capabilities. Industry-leading customer service is available 24/7/365.
“Our old system just did not provide a positive customer experience.
Multi Service Fuel Card’s Director of Risk Management and Collections Clint Knisal is responsible for all risk management and collections. His team reviews new credit applications, manages fraud risk, and handles collections. Nearly all of the company’s weekly billing cycle is set up for weekly payment via ACH, but occasionally those payments are returned. That’s when the team has to recover lost funds and make Multi Service Fuel Card whole again. With thousands of active accounts in the portfolio and an average return payment of approximately $3K, there’s a lot at stake.
Knisal says that their old card processor. lacked a customer-facing portal. “In the past,” he says, “if a customer was in arrears and wanted to use a debit card to cover the return payment, they had to call into customer service, and then a representative had to verbally take the information and run the payment. There were data privacy concerns around PPI being verbally shared over a phone call and our need to manually input the numbers.”
Inefficiencies were also a problem. Knisal explains, “At the end of the day, considering the number of transactions that we deal with, we’re a very lean operation. We don’t have the bandwidth or staff to rely on manual processes.”
Leadership was ready for a change.
Senior Director of Operations Ralph Shepard and Senior Director of Finance Sarah Hall formed a search team with Knisal. They began by reaching out to their current vendor and asked for a client-facing self-service payment portal, but the cost of custom-creating one would be prohibitive, so the three ruled it out. After some research, the committee narrowed their choices down to Tratta and two competitors. Knisal reports that two main factors drove their decision: cost and API functionality.
After a side-by-side comparison, Tratta was the unanimous choice.
“With Tratta, it all happens like magic.”
Data migration was complete in just a few months and Multi Service Fuel Card’s flexible Tratta system was ready to launch in September 2024. Knisal says, “It really didn't take more than a couple of days of training, and then we flipped the switch on.” Tratta-provided documentation was bolstered by internal training to create a short learning curve. 28 collections, customer service, and Finance department employees were quickly ready to use the system daily.
Multi Service Fuel Card now benefits from a fully integrated and automated system. Knisal says, “Every day, the system generates a report of return payments. Then our automated system creates Salesforce cases and generates the necessary omnichannel communication, automatically passing that data back to Tratta. It’s so easy. The customer just pushes a button embedded in an email or text, sets up an account with Tratta, and makes payment. Even better, once that account is established, they have fewer steps the next time. It all happens like magic.”
When users have a question, Tratta’s Director of Client Success, Tim Hemsworth is on hand with an answer. Knisal says, “We typically get the information we need the same day. If it’s a technical question, Tim either figures it out himself or goes back to his engineering team and replies within 24 hours. It's been a great customer experience.”
“In only seven months, card payments have doubled. We have recovered over $650,000 more via Tratta vs. the old card processor and regained innumerable work hours.”
When asked what Multi Service Fuel Card staff like about their new debt recovery system, Clint Knisal has a quick answer. “The first contact is typically about helping the customer get set up with Tratta. After that, it's pretty much hands off. The customer can self-serve. That is a big benefit for our teams.”
Partnering with Tratta has yielded swift, substantial, and quantifiable results across departments. Most notably, the company has seen an undeniable impact on collections. Knisal says, “Not everybody wants to call in and talk to a customer service rep, no matter how friendly and good they are. Some people would rather just be able to click on a link, make a payment, get their account turned back on and hit the road again. In the past, when a call to customer service was required to clear a past due account, only about 20% of our return payments were paid via debit card. Those who didn’t want to call in had to wire payment or send a Western Union. It was inconvenient and cost prohibitive.”
He pauses before sharing the rest of the story. “Card payments have doubled to almost 40% since we started using Tratta,” he says. “Last month, for the first time, card payments accounted for more than half of collections, so we’re seeing an upward trend. We have recovered over $650,000 more via Tratta compared to the amount we had collected via the old card processor and regained innumerable work hours in only seven months.”
Reporting capabilities have improved. “All my data is in one centralized location,” says Knisal. “I can pull it easily and download it for analysis with just a click. I can put it in whatever format or presentation that the Senior Leaders request.” He continues, “I have the ability to look at how much money we've collected via Tratta on any day or any month, or since the relationship began. That's big for senior leadership because they need me to demonstrate quick return on the investment – but there’s no issue there. There’s been a significant increase in our ability to collect. We definitely made the right decision.”
