A Comprehensive Report on Coca-Cola's Customer Relationship Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Coca-Cola's customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. It begins with an executive summary and an introduction to the Coca-Cola Company, highlighting its market position, competitive advantages, and value proposition. The report delves into Coca-Cola's CRM model, including its customer-centric approach, strategies for attracting and maintaining customer relationships, and customer complaint management. It explores the implementation of new CRM processes, the use of the Francis Buttle model, and the company's customer service policies, including website navigation and customer-facing business processes. The report also identifies new CRM needs and concludes with recommendations for improving the organization's CRM. The report emphasizes the importance of customer relationships in building long-term customer loyalty and generating regular sales. The analysis covers a range of topics, from the organization's CRM system to the current CRM components.

Running head: UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Understanding Customer Relations
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1UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Executive Summary
The report is going to discuss about the Coca Cola Company. The report will describe briefly
about the selected organization. This is very much necessary to understand the position of the
organization in the market and the benefits gained from market. The report will also discuss
about the competitive advantage offered to the business. This is important to understand the
strategies implemented by the Coca Cola Company. The report will discuss the value
proposition of the Coca Cola Company. The company is an American based corporation and
is the leading business in the sector of nonalcoholic beverage concentrate and syrups. The
Coca Cola Company is well known for its product invented in the year 1886. This business
serves globally and is the leading beverage company. The report is going to discuss about the
CRM model and process associated with the Coca Cola company. This includes customer
centricity towards the Coca Cola Company, the way this business attracts new customers.
This also includes the strategy to maintain the customer relationship within the business.
Apart from these, the customer complaints management within the business is also needed to
be understood. The report will also include implementation of new CRM processes and
finally the report will provide a recommendation in way to improve the working of the
organization.

2UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Introduction
The Coca Cola Company is a corporation mainly America based. This among the
leading beverage company. The founder of Coca Cola is John Pemberton and is having
headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. and United States. The company serves all over the
world and is having a great revenue rate. The organization employs around 61,800
employees. This is best-selling soft drink in maximum countries, and by the year 2010 this
was considered as the number one beverage company globally. The organization has spent
around US$3.256 billion for advertising purpose (Zhang, Zhang & Gao, 2015). The market
share of Coca Cola might not have increased as much a $300 billion and there are chances to
get reduced. The market share value of the company varies and it may be below 15% or it
will be above 45%. There are high chances that the share value will decrease with time for
Coca Cola Company. According to a statistical report the carbonated soft drink company got
dominated by the Coca Cola Company and the company holds a market share around 48.6
percent. Being the world’s largest beverage company, Coca Cola company is spread over
more than 200 countries and across 5 operating regions this includes, Asia Pacific, Europe,
middle east and Africa, north America, Latin America and bottling investments.
The organization has achieved great competitive advantage in the market due to its
brand image and due to the presence, all over the world. The main advantage of the Coca
Cola Company is that its presence globally and plays a significant role in more than 200
companies. It is easily identified by the logo among the crowd and is considered among huge
brands. The brand image is associated with the young generation and is used to represent
energy and youthfulness (Kumar & Reinartz, 2018). This shows, that the brand has found
great importance and loved by the youth all over the world. The company is having a large
supply chain and is associated with distribution network throughout the world. The company
aims at manufacturing and selling concentrates beverages and syrups to bottling operations.

3UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
The Coca Cola group is very much concerned with choosing the bottling operations and
invests accordingly. Apart from these two advantages the company possess a great marketing
capability. The company has served a great marketing campaigns and engage a lot of
customer. In spite of having digital technology the brand aims at creating attractive video
advertisements (Johanson & Mattsson, 2015). Financial strength is another important factor
that helps in gaining good competitive advantage and with the implementation of variation in
flavors and packaging it attracts more customers. Apart from this, the brand possesses several
patents, trade secrets and copyrights of their own. The company has licensed some of the
designing and packaging suppliers. This is important to understand that even the formulae of
soda beverages are also an important aspect for gaining competitive advantage towards the
brand.
The business Value proposition of Coca Cola Company
The value proposition Of Coca Cola Company provides value for their customers.
Thus, for the coca cola organization customer plays a major role in terms of delivering good
products. This is very much necessary to follow some points for having a good brad value
proposition (Homburg, Jozić, & Kuehnl, 2017). This includes:
Choosing a broad positioning: the aim of Coca Cola Company is to be the leading
beverage producing company. The coca cola has turned t be the best product leader by
following the value discipline of treacy and wiersema. The aim of the Coca Cola Company is
hatting every family should have a bottle of coke at the time of lunch. Apart from this, the
second objective is to be excellent in operations (Soltani, & Navimipour, 2016).
Choosing a specific position: the positioning of the brand can be decided base on
the several sources used, this includes:
 Positioning the attribute: sweet, refreshing, unique, tasted

4UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
 Benefit positioning: Coca Cola promises happiness too their customers
 Competitor positioning: the company is the leader in worldwide market
 Category position of Coca Cola: these company is treated as the world cola
Choosing a value positioning for the brand: this is very much necessary to understand
the massive leader store product.
Developing a value proposition: this is necessary to develop a brand proposition in
the market. As the company’s aim is to give a unique experience of happiness.
Secondly comes the importance of building a brand value, this includes brand name
and building a positive association. Brand name plays an important role. Coca cola is also
known as the coke and this means only one. This is the most popular brand. Apart from this,
it is very much necessary to have a positive association (Hassan et al., 2015). As coca cola is
associated with spreading happiness thus it gives a different term value towards the
company’s image.
CRM or the Customer Relationship management is generally considered to be a
crucial and sensitive stage as this helps in dealing with numerous and different kind of
customer. So, it is essential to maintain a strong Customer relation which would be helping a
lot in building up the long-term relationship with the customers and also for the purpose of
generating regular sales (Lee et al., 2015). Cocoa-cola has been associated with attracting its
consumer by means of advertising. In addition to this they are also associated with creating a
highly effective and emotional ads so as to induce the customer and also for the purpose of
treating the customers in a fondly way. For all this reason they have been capable of
remaining a dominating organization in the beverages market and is closely followed by
Pepsi.

5UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Customer Relationship Management Value Chain using Francis Buttle’s
Model:
The CRM or the customer relationship management systems used by Coca-Cola
company is associated with exemplification of the various things that are provided by the
modern technology. The primary goal that the organization is having in relation to the CRM
mainly includes the keeping of track of the customers along with an exemplary focus upon
the customers. The organization is associated with eth usage of the SAP CRM system that
helps in aiding the processes existing within the organization along with helping in improving
the new functions so as to aid in gaining customer satisfaction (Kroll, Neshkova, & Pandey,
2017). In addition to this the organization is also associated with providing feedbacks by
making use of eth emails, telephones or instant massages via the official website of the
organization. A collaborative CRM has been setup by the organization by data analysis so as
to augment the various capabilities that the site is having. The sales representatives are also
associated with contacting the leads with in 24 hours or less than that. All these
implementations have been associated with establishing an efficient customer loyalty along
with the retention of the customers.
The Customer service policies at Coca-Cola:
Ensuring of the customer augmentation has been done the organization as well along
with customer retention by making use of the official website of the company. The
organization is also having the goal of responding to all the enquiries made by the customers
online within a very short period. The privacy policy of this organization has also been
revised in the Month of November of 2015 and this has been done mainly to keep the security
of the customers updated (Naschold, 2017). Besides this the organization is also having a
Safe Harbour Policy which helps the individuals in understanding their personal information
security that are involved in any kind of online transactions along with ensuring the fact that

6UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
there exists 100% transparency in terms of the information related to the calories contained in
the various products a strict supplier and partnership policy is followed by the organization
which is generally delineated in the website of the company as well.
Website Navigation of Coca-Cola:
The website that the organization is having is consisting of a clear and succinct
navigation along with a proper search query. Transparency is the major goal of the
organization as stated earlier and as the customers wants a site which is easier to pursue along
with being simple in discovering the target goal of the viewership so all these things have
been provided by the organization (Kraus, 2018). Besides this the company has also realized
the fact that the website needs to have an easy navigation so they have kept it easy helping
the customers in researching certain products or to make enquiry regarding a certain product
and many more. A specific language has been used that helps in directing the viewer to the
things that they desire in the website of the organization. So, it can be stated that eth website
that eth organization is having is very easy to use and simple for the customers.
Customer-Facing Business Processes
Myriad of interfaces are used the organization Coca-Cola Company for its customer-
face business processes which are popular with companies of today. One such example is the
inserting of the numerous software programs which are directly co-related to the viewer
(Ireland & Ashton, 2017). This type of application includes the applications which are
associated with interacting with the customer in different levels. One such way by which the
organization has done this is by the implementation of the help desk process which would be
assisting the customers by providing real-time support. In this a number from A 1-800
number is provided by making use of the website and another way is by doing a chat with the
online customer representative (Deal, 2018). Lastly Customer service surveys are generally
sent at regular basis to any email which is left by the website inquirer.

7UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
New CRM needs of Coca-Cola:
Like other companies the organization Coca-Cola has tried as well as rejected
numerous and various kind of ways of reaching the customers. In the world consisting of fast
paced internet various companies like Coca-Cola are repeatedly finding themselves outpaced
by the other smaller business which are capable of adapting to eth changes at a faster rate
(Hendricks et al., 2015). The organization now needs to become more adaptable so as to scale
their business up and down in accordance to the individual demands of eth customers.
The figure provided below depicts the current CRM of the organization which has
been audited by making use of the Payne and Frow’s 5 Process Model:
Fig 1: Payne and Frow’s 5 Process Model analysis
(Source: Created by author)

8UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
The new CRM components:
There are several things which needs to be included in the new CRM system of Coca-
Cola. One of the most important requirements which needs to eb included in the CRM is the
speed of delivery and the capability of being able to get connected with the retailers as well
as to the distributers existing throughout the globe as quickly as possible (Boyjoo et al.,
2017). Despite of trying a lot of systems it was observed by the organization that they were
not capable of having a 100% production regarding the connections which are needed by the
organization. Which means the corporate and the customer relations managers were not
capable of interacting with the field reps or the departments associated with bottling in time.
Another major issue faced by the technical and the repair department and the major problems
included slow sync uptimes, along with frequent downtimes and all this were responsible for
dissatisfying the customers regarding eth services provided by the organization (Karnani,
2014).
The new CRM that is to be used by the organization would eb consisting of an
adaptable tool which wold be associated with allowing the organization to manage the
general opinions of the public regarding the brand along with helping the organization in
getting connected to the customers in a more effective way (Seow‐En & Seow‐Choen, 2016).
The new CRM would be using the cloud connection system which would be allowing the
different departments of the organization to get connected with one another in order to make
improvements in the various practices related to customer care.
Usage of this new CRM the organization Coca-Cola would become capable of dealing
with the customer issues as quickly as possible and this would eb helping in elimination of
the delay timing and the resolving of the issues would not be delayed as well. The new CRM
can be described as the “link for connecting all the dispersed dots”. This new CRM would eb
helping in making the issues visible to everyone inside the organization and as soon as the

9UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
issues occurs (Irefin & Mechanic, 2014). Along with this providing of the mobile apps would
be helping in getting an immediate access to the history of the computers so as to generate
repair as well as work orders. This would be also be helping in sending the field technicians
immediately in real time. Usage of the CRM features globally would eb helping the
organization in monitoring the behaviours of eth customers, social media along with
obtaining more general online brand perception (Smarandescu & Shimp, 2015). All this
information can be used in a remote fashion so as to promote the various kind of offers and
promotions.
Fig 2: New CRM process
(Source: Created by author)
Conclusion
The report has discussed about the working principles followed by Coca Cola
Company. The report has discussed the importance of these company in the beverage
industry. The company is an American corporation and aims at manufacturing, retailing and

10UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
having market of nonalcoholic beverage. The flagship product coca- cola was invented in the
year 1886. The company is located in Atlanta and serves its product over 200 countries. This
company is the leading beverage company throughout the world. The value proposition
associated with the company is also described in the report. It is very much necessary to
determine the market position of the company, as this will help to gain more profit margins.
Coca Cola Company is the choice of youth and the company aims at spreading happiness.
The report has given an overview of the company. The report has also included CRM in it.
CRM I basically a practice, technologies and strategies that helps the company to analyses
and manage the interaction made with the customer and the data collected throughout the
customer lifecycle. The goal is to improve the customer service relationship within the
organization. The key features offered with the implementation of CRM are provides lead
management, deals and tasks, email tracking, social media management, mobile version. The
report has also described the way in which new CRM can be implemented within the
organization. With the implementation of CRM the company will be able to enhance the
service provided to their customer. The later part of the report has provided a
recommendation and a new way of implementing CRM, this will help in improving the
working of Coca Cola Company. The implementation of CRM will help in increasing
productivity and in gaining better feedback from the customer. Thus, this report aims at
delivering the main features associated with the coca cola.

11UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER RELATIONS
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