CRM of Coca-Cola and the QCI Model

Customer relationship management is managing the interactions between the customers, clients ,sales prospects and the company. CRM needs technology to organise sales activities, marketing, technical support and customer service. The Aim is to find new clients, retain the old customer those the company already have and reduce the cost of marketing and the service provide to the customers. CRM shows the company strategy including the customer interface department and other departments.

“Customer relationship management is the development and maintenance of mutually beneficial long-term relationships with strategically significant customers.” ((Buttle, 2000)

CRM support the relationship between a business and its customers are to

• Acquire
• Enhance
• Retain

Relationship marketing that views customers as assets and emphasizes retaining customers by nurturing and sustaining a relationship with them. It involves building the value for the customer and giving the perception that the company and the customer are partners. Relationship marketing creates bonds with customers bu fully understanding and responding to their needs, requirements and problems with customized personal service.

Marketing Mix is used to indicate the integrating of several variables to satisfy specific consumer needs. The task of the marketing manager is to form these variables into marketing mix that meets the needs of each consumer group or market segment targeted by the company. The most widely used marketing mix is the “Four Ps”

1. Product
2. Price
3. Promotion
4. Place

Introduction to the Coca-Cola Company

Coca-Cola is the world largest beverage company. They sell their products over 200 countries and over one billion of their products is consumed each day. Maintaining the finances and logistics is the crucial task. Coca Cola started using a system called the legacy system which found to be very inefficient. This system was generating high cost and was not user friendly. All the finical plans are entered manually and used to re entered for updating the information. When Coca cola expanded this became more crucial for their success.

Coca Cola need a far more advance business management system. So Coca Cola decided to use SAP Strategic Enterprise Management. They implemented SAP financials into their business in order to handle the financial processes of the corporation. SEM provides Business Planning Simulation for finances, Data Warehousing for information collection and data analysis, and can also generate financial reports and monthly sales forecasts.

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QCI Model for Coca Cola Company

Business strategy of Coca Cola is Think local, act local. The integration between the local bottlers and delivery to the customers is crucial to the company’s overall efficiency and keeping the customers satisfied. Full-service vending, Direct Store Delivery (DSD), and equipment services are very important for bottlers’ business operations and profit centres. DSD gather customer information to distributors. With that specific data they improve cost control in delivering products.  They receive request from Sales representatives, Mobile device and Service staff. With these details the store can respond easily to the customers and make the process more efficiently. The RFID gives feedback that benefits research, marketing and product development

We can improve customer service and satisfaction using better CRM. Using advance CRM we can get the required information of the customer. IT system again collects all the data and analysis them and provide information to provide a better product that suit the customer needs.

Using SAP CRM system Coca-Cola was able to achieve their goal of customer focus. The CRM help’s the existing processes and also improve the new functions to satisfy the customer. These kinds of CRM help updates and improve the market share for the computer and create a better name with the customer and also reduce the cost for transportation.

The CRM in Coca Cola also handle customer service support where you can direct talk to the person in the company for problem with the product. They have different type of service all around the world. They provide the customer service not only through feedback, email and telephone but also through monitoring and many types of analysis. So by this collaborative CRM, Coca Cola has provided efficient customer service to gain customer satisfaction.

Coca Cola was able to continue to grow with the demands as they were able to provide to their customer needs. They always focus on to satisfy the customer needs with the new infrastructure of CRM,ERP and well maintained SCM system they were able to achieve the goals which they really needed to satisfy the customers. By this way there were able to be in the top in the beverage industry. They are still facing a lot of problem to be in the top position but well maintain CRM will never lose the position.

 “As we have always done in the past, I know that this industry will rise to the occasion” (E.Neville Isdell 2005)

Coca Cola has taken many steps to win back the customer and to retain the existing customer. They have created a fan page in Facebook which became a very popular with the customers and when they are connected to Facebook, They can actually keep on getting update on recent action by Coca Cola. They can send group message in Facebook. Can gain feedback from customer and provide solution online. Coca Cola is able to advertise in Facebook and gain more customers through the social site. Coca Cola also can gain all the details of the customer from the Facebook page and provide appropriate personalized service to gain more customer and also retain the existing customers.

These kind of social networking site help the company to be closer to the customers. Marketing and Advertising in these kind of site will also help the company to grown better. Some of the company does not accept this fact but Coca cola established their Facebook fan page in the third quarter of 2008 by the mid of 2009 there were around 3.4 million fan. But this fan page was created by a Coca Cola fan after much consideration Coca Cola used it as a promotion page and a place where they can build a relationship with the customers.

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Coca Cola gained a idea and used this Facebook page as a promotion page and was able to gain information from the Facebook wall and provide promotional offers to the customers. They created many ways to keep in touch with the customer by creating Application online for computers and mobile phone. They also provide exclusive sneak peeks for the customer in Facebook. Coca Cola was able to maintain this Facebook page and gather the required information and be in contact with the customers. The company able to attract all the customer, When you go to the Facebook wall page you can see all the language. From this we can see that the company is able to build a good name in all the countries. Coca Cola is the second largest fan page in Facebook as they are around 3.4 million fans in it. When we calculate the number of members join per day would come around 3500. So Coca Cola through this is the best way for promotion and gaining the customer feedback.

Coca Cola was able to bring a new innovate vending machine with fountain dispenser called Freestyle. In this the customer can customize their own drink from 100 combinations and this was the first time they can have provide 100 combinations which are not introduced before. The most important about the freestyle vending machine was it is connected to SAP system. So it collect all the customer data and stored in CRM system. It also identifies if the freestyle machine needs to be refilled or not. So they can easy refill it and it also uses the RFID.

The Vending machine also has major disadvantage when there is out of stock of the item. Customer can easily choose other product so Coca Cola has to main there strategy in this to maintain the stock and to gain the customer satisfaction. So vending machine should be place in appropriate place where there is easy access of refilling and places where we can cover a lot of customers. We can also find out which products which has sold more and the product which is contribute more profit. We can provide many different products to the customer by giving different product at same day. This is the best way to sell the product more effectively.

We can use credit card to pay for the drink which can also provide loyalty points so we can get a free product once a while. It can also identify your drink with the card and you can easily select it and pay for it. This is all built in the vending machine so it is more user friendly for the customer to order and get their favourite drink easily. This is how Coca Cola is able to attract more customer and provide the customer what they required.

Coca Cola is trying to take a bigger step by creating a beverage on the spot for the customer and not to put it in a vending machine. Customer can select the required ingredients with a touch screen and we can track the inventory and the customer favourite product so we can serve the customer the better. This is a major operational CRM used attract customer into the company. This is a major step for Coca Cola but being the leader in beverage they need to take necessary step and new innovative idea to be in the top position.

Coca Cola has started a new marketing environment by providing a unique pin number in the bottle which can be used to save 75 cents of the mobile bill. They can also gain point for icoke from this system. So this is one of the best marketing techniques to gain customer by giving offer to their daily use products. Coca Cola has worked on this strategy and made some more advance option in it and applied it to United Kingdom. Where you can get the redeemed instantly with the wireless service and get some credit of the minutes.

Coca Cola customer gain icoke points from this way and they can use these points to purchase tickets and get some discount on direct purchase. Coca Cola has also joined with Mc Donald’s and provide varies offer in purchasing a meal. These kinds of offer revoke the customer and make them purchase the drink. Coke also sells four out of five drinks in all major countries so consumers are able to select and purchase the drink with selected offers.

Coca Cola has done one of the best marketing with the Air Bonus. It does not have any back office work. Customer can get the discount instantly without any problem. Mobile phone is a daily use product which helps the customer more. The phone is used a like a loyalty card. They also create a lot of contest online and make customer to play for exiting prize. This kind of action revokes customer to purchase coke.

Customers Go Better With Coke

As Coca Cola is working on this kind of strategy by creating a Fan page and using a better CRM and SCM process they are able to serve the customer easily and personalizing each customer needs and providing drink according to their taste. This kind of promotion can create word of mouth in office and other entrainment centre where people can take a time out and have some drink and talk about it in online and provide valuable feedback. This can create a major buzz in about the product and help expanding bigger. We can attract new customer with this kind of CRM strategy and retain the existing customer. We can also win back the customer by creating personalizing service.

My view on Coca Cola

While expanding the company they started to use advance CRM strategy which help the company to grow better and Coca Cola also understand the customer needs and provided innovative vending machine like freestyle made the customer to like Coca Cola. They provided exiting offer to the existing customer with icoke points and discount in phone bill. They used the IT system to get feedback and also made a quality monitoring in customer service made the customer more satisfied. They also used Facebook Fan page as a biggest promotion centre and provided some seek peek for customer. Coca Cola fan page is the second largest fan page in Facebook. We have used the QCI model on this case study to clearly study the Coca Cola CRM process.

Conclusion

The overview of this case study clearly provides information that using advance CRM strategy help Coca Cola to achieve their goal without losing their market. They were able to provide offers and started some contest online to play and win exiting prizes. They have created a freestyle vending machine where a customer can make his own drink from 100 combinations. This was one of the biggest step for Coca Cola. They were able to do online promotion in one of the top Social networking site. There were able to gain the largest number of fans in it. Coca Cola is able to collect data from vending machine, mobile, Customer service, online network and provide solution and give personalized service to the customer. Coca Cola is able to win back there customer with the new freestyle vending. Coca Cola is able to manage their top position in beverage with their advance CRM process.