COMPANY NAME

CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Air Liquide-Airgas Merger

Student Name: Baligad, Joanna Marie(Student ID: 1125415) and muskaan muskaan (Student ID: 1049047)

Date: August 15, 2022

CRM-A-Management Project: MGMT-6066/Moreau-Rodgers

1: Author of Document
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Overview
Executive Overview

Olivier Blachier has a concept to upgrade Air Liquide's digital technologies in order to focus on customer centricity. The
client strategy at Air Liquide has been to concentrate on large accounts and to target on plans for a long-term relationship
with those customers in various business areas, including Large Industries, Electronics, and Industry Merchant. Only the
Home Healthcare business line has a business-to-consumer (B2C) approach, with the other business lines concentrating
on business-to-business (B2B) relationships. Through the ALBEE web shop, Air Liquide made its initial foray into online
commerce. They only sell welding and cutting applications and target small enterprises or B2SmallB. They subsequently
closed this site and launched MyGas.com, evolving the site over time.

Airgas, a distributor of industrial gases and welding equipment that operated until 2016, has been acquired by Industrial
Merchant line, led by Blanchier. Prior to the acquisition, Airgas established a reputation for itself by putting the needs of
their customers first and applying customer-centricity to all of the brand's decisions. They provide an omnichannel model
for easy ordering and delivery. They also made an investment in e-commerce, where the majority of their customers
purchased their goods after it was launched. They invested in sales representatives and distribution centers around the
United States for its consumers, including over 900 branches, to ensure that purchases were easily accessible.

Blanchier will experience challenge in combining the two groups and examining their current approaches to reach
customers to articulate what customer-centricity meant for both groups based on their backgrounds, perspectives on
customer centricity, and contemporary digital technologies to meet customers' expectations.

2: Author of Document
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Issue

Blanchier's primary goal in accepting this role is to strengthen Air Liquide's digital technology. However, one of his
dilemmas is the question of what customer-centricity entails for both groups. Both groups have distinct target markets and
client segments, and each group has tailored its organizational structure to meet those consumer demands. The Home
Healthcare business line of Air Liquide is equated to Airgas' current efforts to become more customer-centric by reaching
out to specific end users or using a B2C model. Large Industries, Electronics, and Industrial Merchants, on the other
hand, are focusing on B2B model to large accounts such as steel producers, oil refineries, hospitals, and so on, making it
difficult to attain customer centricity. Blanchier should prioritize determining how to engage clients in the same way that
Home Healthcare and Airgas are and applying similar methods into these large accounts.

One of the issues is the gap in digital technology between the two groups. This clarifies the difference between their target
market and the way Air Liquide is making an effort to establish a digital presence on its major accounts. Air Liquide
provides a team dedicated to a single customer for these large accounts, and a long-term connection is developed with
them through a variety of functional areas. Large accounts won't need digital technology because they already have a
team to assist customers with their purchases. Airgas, on the other hand, places a high value on efforts toward a B2C
model for digital technology. They were really focused on offering customers with convenience because this is what drove
their success.

3: Author of Document
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Case Analysis

Three goals were the center of the case. These include understanding how Air Liquide and Airgas develop their
customer-centric strategies; improve digital technologies for the organizations' various consumers, and how their
worldwide organizational structure may assist them in reaching customers all over the world. The case provided details
pertaining to these goals while keeping these goals in mind. The case outlined Air Liquide's several target markets for
each of its business divisions. It describes how they launched their e-commerce and how it closed and evolved through
time, which is related to their second goal. Additionally, it explained how Airgas' emphasis on customer-centric tactics
helped the company grow successfully independently before being acquired. They are an international corporation that is
expanding throughout the world and constantly establishing their brand in Asia, particularly in those nations that mostly
support their local competitors. Olivier Blanchier, the current Group Vice-President of Air Liquide's Industrial Merchant
Division, was promoted to handle Asia, where the company has its headquarters in Shanghai, China. Prior to accepting
this position, these goals must be satisfied because they will be crucial in helping him choose his new position.

CRM Theory

The theory that can be applied to this issue is how Air Liquide uses customer acquisition and retention. Air Liquide is a
very distinct brand, and a consumer will enter the customer acquisition funnel where they will have to develop brand
awareness, learn more about their offering, and what safety precautions are in place, among other things. After exploring
for alternative companies offering the same goods, they will be added to the consideration pool. Then there's the decision
about where the customer will buy the merchandise. In contrast to the food and textile industries, this form of business
can require a lot of thinking and a high level of commitment. They also do a lot of customer retention, where they focus

4: Author of Document
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

more on loyalty by assigning an entire team to handle the major accounts. This technique leads to the consumer
becoming a well-established customer, resulting in significant long-term results for the organization. However, they are
employing an offensive strategy for their customers by presumably leveraging premium offerings to important accounts.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses
● Organizational structure ● Unestablished E-commerce

Air Liquide's organizational structure is a "network
organization," in which they divide their company into four
regional hubs in four nations to serve all of the nearby
countries. Where decision-making is focused on regional
hubs and a decentralized strategy to focus more on the
client.
● Dealing with major accounts
They have a team for each of their big customers in Large
Industries. They made a significant investment in a team
that performs a diverse range of tasks, including
marketing, administration, and research and development,
and they really meet the needs of their main clients in
these areas.
They both have built their digital presence to cater to their
respective target customers; yet, it is insufficient,
particularly in the case of Air Liquide, since there is nothing
in the case indicating that they have succeeded in
establishing an online presence; however, e-commerce
sales have been expanding in the Industrial Merchant
division.
● Lack of Customer Lifetime Value
● Insufficient CRM technologies
They are developing their digital presence, but their
customer relations automation are not evident, implying
that they are not focused on establishing personal

5: Author of Document

● Offer a variety of products
They provide a range of goods to various industries where
industrial gas is required. They also broaden their
consumer base based on their product offerings, such as
the Home Healthcare division, where they have clearly
defined their target market.
Threats
● Local competitors
In other places, like China, local rivals have a significant
impact on the industry. When it comes to industrial gases,
the customers are supporting their local businesses.
● More customer centric competitors
Numerous individuals backed businesses that gave them a
sense of exclusivity and catered to their needs via various
channels, such as the internet.
● Materials to make industrial gas
Some of their product offerings were derived from natural
resources, making production more difficult in the event of
a calamity.
6: Author of Document
COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]
relationships with their customers, particularly with the
divisions that employ the B2C model.
Opportunities
● Expanding to other countries
Air Liquide and Airgas are established international
companies, but they can yet expand to reach other
countries that lack natural resources to create industrial
gases.
● 3rd party CRM Technology
A new level of personalization made possible by CRM
technology can provide them a significant competitive
advantage in the market. The use of 3rd party CRM
technology can help businesses learn more about their
clients and concentrate more on long-term customer
retention initiatives.
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Analysis Conclusions

Based on our analysis of the case, we draw the conclusion that Olivier Blanchier will experience a number of difficulties in
fostering a customer-centric culture between these two groups, beginning with defining what this means to each group. It
can be the Air Liquide method to concentrate on substantial accounts that are unquestionably profitable or the Airgas
strategy where they give a lot of concentration and urgency to the wants of the customers and perform the "defence" of
customer retention by concentrating on customer service. They also intend to leverage digital technology for their clients,
which is focused on e-commerce but not advanced enough to claim that the company is digitally progressive, and to reach
Asian customers who are more supportive of their local counterpart. The future of the brand will be determined by how
they decide on these, which will also serve as the basis for determining if a consumer will be lucrative or not. Our
recommendations and alternatives will be built upon these conclusions.

Alternatives & Recommendation

Alternatives

Alternatives Advantages Disadvantages

Pay attention on how they plan to raise - Every profitable customer's - Customers may only purchase
their Customer Lifetime Value for Airgas Customer Lifetime Value once.
should be measured in order

7: Author of Document

Airgas has to increase its
customer-centricity and target a more
narrowly defined customer base by
using CRM Automation with a focus on
marketing automation, including email
drip campaigns, data syncing, and other
techniques.
If Air Liquide is to expand and acquire
Asian customers, the organization
structure must adapt to the culture and
promote personalization with each
customer.
8: Author of Document
to track customer acquisition
costs.
- Determine how much money
should be spent on marketing
initiatives.
- Reaching out to small-scale
clients to meet their demands
- Using CRM automation will
allow them to get to know their
consumers even better.
- Targeted marketing,
advertising, and customer
relationship management
activities by adapting to Asian
business culture.
- Feeling of exclusivity
COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]
- Unlike Air Liquide, Airgas
clients will be numerous and
will have a large number of
work to measure each
customer's CLV.
- It may irritate existing
customers.
- Using CRM may be redundant
because they already have
"Total Access," which focuses
on their customer
relationships.
- Language barrier
- Familiarizing Chinese
business culture.
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Recommendation

We decided to follow the last recommendation, which states that the organisational structure must be tailored to Chinese
culture, based on our study and the alternatives we presented that addressed the majority of the problems we identified.
We concentrated on China because it is the only country that Air Liquide and Airgas are unable to serve due to their
increased market focus on local competitors. Blanchier might concentrate on analyzing Chinese culture, business culture,
and even try to speak their language through strategic planning on the organizational structure that will be led by him. This
effort will be reflected to the staff as well as the regional marketing campaigns. Additionally, it may be the ideal time to
introduce digital technology to their clientele, since Chinese people are renowned for being among the most cutting-edge
in terms of technology. They could also employ a CRM department that can handle "Voice of the Customer" and CRM
automation. We selected this suggestion based on the potential strategy enhancements from another nation, which
include sustainability, flexibility, targeted, and diversification.

9: Author of Document
 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Implementation Plan
Overview
In this implementation plan we will be focusing on making the company more customer centric, increasing its market
holding in B2C platform and we will do all these by using CRM strategies tailored for customer centric experience with the
company following a proper timeline that will help us to acquire the target audience. We will follow the recommendations
and infuse them with our strategies

Plan Details
● Audience
The segment of the audience we are targeting can be identified as middle class mosaic (in PRIZM
segments)
Average household income - $95,431
Average household net worth - $334,169
House tenure - Own
Education - High School/Grade 9/ College
Occupation - Service sector, manufacturing, industrial merchant

10: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

The Persona of the type of audience we selected

11: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Target Audience (Simply Analytics)

● Customer Journey Map

12: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Customer journey Awareness Stage Consideration Stage Decision Stage Purchase Stage

What is customer thinking? Curious about the product Considers if its worth buying Thinks if it provides more If satisfied with purchase or
or not value than other companies not.

What is customers action? Ask co-workers and Browses website and Input payment methods to Does the payment
searches on internet compares different models checkout

What is he researching? Researching about the Researching about the Researching about the price
company products and the quality the
company offers

How will business support Provide supporting Build an effective website Show benefits of the Have a seamless
the client here? personalised ads having good UX and fulfilling products over other onboarding experience
all the needs displaying companies
proper information.

Touchpoint Banner ad Landing page Cart Confirmation page Order confirmation page
Business website Checkout page
Product page Payment page

13: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

● CRM Strategies

As our goal is retention of existing customers as well as acquiring new customers, therefore we will be following
mainly these strategies -
• Develop an understanding of your client’s professional and personal connections to better tailor your sales
and marketing efforts to them.
• Connect your teams, unify your business, and make knowledge-sharing with your customer service team
a top priority.
• Maintain Customer Communication

● CRM Tactics
• Create a strong and good onboarding process sob that the business has the opportunity to create a good
first impression.
• Have workflows with well-timed email triggers, follow-up messaging, self-service knowledge base access,
and celebratory messaging to excite and impress new clients.

• Provide a personalised customer experience.

• Build Trust with customers .

• Implement a customer feedback loop and inform the teams about the feedback to the teams unifying them..

• Maintain a customer communication calendar.

• Send a company newsletter about more and updated products.

14: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

● Organizational Recommendation –
The right CRM software offers a holistic view of your customer database – allowing you to identify where any
need-to-know (and potentially profitable) connections occur between your clients. One of our favourite CRM
systems helping you manage relationships and drive sales is Pipedrive.

Use a CRM system like Zoho CRM or zendesk ,with everything they need at their disposal via the software’s
unified, cloud-based interface, the customer service team will be able to handle issues, requests, and
complaints with greater ease and professionalism.

● High-level Timeline
The timeline will follow as
1. Creating a good onboarding process at the beginning.
2. Then providing personalized customer experience once the process of usage of the product starts.
3. Ask for feedback after few a time has passed
4. Take the feedback and work on it
5. Build trust by providing positive response to the feedback and solving problems
6. Maintain a communication calendar
7. And from time to time in between during the end of the product cycle send a company newsletter.

15: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Plan Conclusion
Our effort in this implementation plan is to have a good retention rate of customers as well as acquire new markets with
our customer centric strategies and build good relationships with the customer in each step of their customer experience.

It solves the problem of the company trying to be more customer centric and trying to have a higher retention rate.

Measure of Success
Three customer success metrics—Average Customer Lifetime, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Churn
Rate—will be used to assess the effectiveness of acquiring Chinese loyal customers.

The calculation of the profit a business expects to make from a particular customer during the typical lifespan of a
customer relationship based on the typical length of a customer's stay as a customer determines both average customer
lifetime and customer lifetime value. According to our suggestion, the necessity of calculating the CLV might measure how
their marketing activities affect the customers whether they will become a customer or not. The customer churn rate,
which gauges how frequently consumers stop doing business with your organization, is also crucial to measure. The best
time frame for your company and industry will be decided by your team. It is critical to understand that there is a high
probability that a customer will not be kept, particularly in these marketplaces. This will assess the effectiveness of every
strategy used by the company to boost profitability in the target market.

Conclusion

16: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

In conclusion, each company has its own customer-centricity challenges. Both of them lack a CRM that would allow them
to get to know their clients better. Air Liquide struggles with deciding which target market to concentrate on and how to
apply the customer-centricity strategy across all business lines. In this situation, we concentrated on Air Liquide-Airgas
and how the acquisition can affect all strategies from all regions depending on the organisational structure. However, we
concentrated on the Asian market because it will be the primary focus of Blanchier's new role. We advise developing a
team of professionals with the inclusion of an IT and CRM department so they may concentrate on developing new
technologies and building relationships with customers. We agreed with this Customer Retention Theory
recommendation, which focused on how to retain clients from a distinct business culture through sustainability,

17: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Appendix: Persona (Graphical Design of Persona)

This is a graphical representation of your entire persona.

18: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

Customer Journey Map (Graphical Design of Map)

19: Author of Document

 COMPANY NAME
CJM Plan [TEMPLATE]

References:
Sophia bernazzani, 9 august 2022

https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-retention-strategies

https://app-simplyanalytics-com.ezpxy.fanshawec.ca/index.html

20: Author of Document