Assumption University, Graduate School of Business

M.B.A Professional Day

BM 6810 Customer Relationship Management

Individual Assignment

SME Study: Diamond Grains

Presented to

Lakeesha Ransom

Presented by

Nida Barros

ID: 6019088 Section: 11

 Executive Summary

This report provides an interview from the owner of Diamond Grains, information about

the brand, the uniqueness of the brand, the strategies that the brand use to improve the

brand, the way to develop the customer base and CRM implement inside the company.

Methods of CRM concepts include strategic CRM, operational CRM, analytical CRM

and other major business orientations.

The report finds the image of the brand is positive, they got an interesting strategies to

promote the brand, have an optimistic mindset in doing business, foresight and prediction

in doing business in the future.

What is Granola?

Granola is a name of food that made of cereals, nuts, oats and usually baked until it is

crisp and toasted. Usually eaten in the morning as breakfast with milk, yogurt or eating

them as a snack. Suitable for people who love eating nutrition food or people who’s very

active because Granola contains benefit that good for health.

The benefit of Granola

● Improved digestion

● Weight loss

● Reduced cholesterol levels

● Boosted energy levels

● Prevention of anemia

Interviewees:

Chanisara Wongdeeprasith (Oun), the owner of Diamond Grains

Supansa Chantranusorn (Puk), secretary

The story of Diamond Grains

Diamond Grains is a healthy food, the granola brand which was founded in 2012 by a

couple, Chanisara Wongdeeprasith and Wutthikarn Wongdeeprasith who back then were

studying at the undergraduate level. They had a dream to start their own food business

together as it has always been their passion. Both want to own a business. They would

like to work and earn their own money since young. They know that only ‘passion’ is not

enough for doing business so they looked for the trend and checked out a foreign market.

Last 3 years, the trend of healthy food wasn't popular as now but they strongly believe

that it’s going to work.

They decided to start making granola bars with various kinds of grains but it failed so

they made it into a piece and then offered their products to be sold in several malls,

bakery shops and coffee shops. However, they were often rejected at the beginning as

grain products were usually perceived to be a difficult sell. Also, the distributors were

uncertain whether the product packaging would look attractive enough to the consumers.

The turning point is when they started to study on a behaviors of consumers who love to

eat clean or healthy food, did research on food, ingredient, trend and looking for the right

supplier. They modified everything from the product packaging to communications

channels by observing what the consumers needed and developing their idea and

innovation. Doing business is not going to be success in one day so they kept trying to

improve their product for 3 years and eventually got the current recipe of Diamond

Grains we see today.

The uniqueness of Diamond Grains

During the time where both Chanisara and Wutthikarn were in the stage of developing

Diamond Grains. They went to the supermarket looking for another granola and they

found out that even though those granola are categorized as a healthy food. Those

products still have sugar and flour as an ingredient when people who eat healthy food

don’t usually eat something that contains sugar or flour and that’s how Diamond Grains

become different from another product in the market.

However, healthy food usually taste doesn’t good compare to normal food. Besides the

nutrition, Diamond Grains also focus on the taste. With the determination of being

healthy and delicious at the same time, Diamond Grains spent a few years trying to

improve the taste because they think even if people really care about their health but if the

product doesn’t taste good, people just can’t force themselves to eat it. Another unique

point of Diamond Grains is crispy. Most of the granola in the market are crispy because

they contain flour and a lot of sugar but Diamond Grains got something to make their

product crispy without having flour and sugar.

Back then, the trend of eating healthy food wasn’t popular in Thailand as now. The

market, target consumer and product were limited. After Diamond Grains become

popular and well-known along with the trend of eating healthy food growing. They

literally become the first granola product in Thailand and become number one best seller.
Currently, the market of granola and healthy food are growing so having competitors is

just a normal thing. They believe that consumer has a right to choose. If they really did

well, consumer will choose them. It depend on how good they did. When competitor

entering the market, they didn’t steal the customer but they are expanding the market.

People are able to see more of this type of product. If there is only Diamond Grains in the

market, consumer can become sick of it and perhaps just stop eating granola. If there are

any another brand in the market, they can just switch to eat other brands.

Diamond Grains’s customer

Most of the Diamond Grains’s customers are people who love eating healthy food along

with those who are always in rush, have less time to take care of themselves like office

worker. However, Diamond Grains pay attention to every customers whether they are

regular or new one. Everyone matters for company to move forward.

Strategies to maintain relationship with customer

Diamond Grains always listen to feedback, opinion and criticism from customer. They

see this as an important factor of improving themselves. They are always ready to accept

them and find the best way to fix as fast as possible in order to make customer feel secure

and be taken care of.

Developing the customer base

Diamond Grains will doing more of public relations in the future. Nowadays there are a

lot of blogger, youtuber and influencers who can promote the brand though famous

youtube channel e.g. Bearhug, LangTooYen. Including the popular famous food website

e.g. Wongnai. Beside those influencer, Diamond Grains currently planning to have a

campaign to raise awareness of healthy food and exercising which can promote the brand

as well. At the same time, Diamond Grains also listen to customer’s voice and try to use

everyone’s opinion to improve in every aspects of the company whether they are the

stage of producing, taste, or employee. Listening to customer’s voice will make the

customer feel that they can relate to not only the food but the company, the brand as well.

They are willing to take care of the regular customer in order to make sure they are happy

and be able to trust Diamond Grains.

CRM in Diamond Grains

Strategic CRM

As the story of Diamond Grains has mentioned above about the package of Diamond

Grains. In term of product-oriented, back then the company have heard from what

customer and distributors said about the package that it wasn’t attractive enough so

Diamond Grains take that suggestion and improve the package to look more stand out and

it work.
Before the current Diamond Grains was born, Chanisara and Wutthikarn wanted to know

what recipe they can go with so that’s why they study on the behaviors of consumers to

find out the ingredient or taste. This is a customer and market-oriented where they collect

customer information to develop their product. Up until now they never stop asking for

customer’s feedback, they even ask for an idea by using social network which is mostly

Twitter to communicate with customer.

In term of sales-oriented, it is the strongest Diamond Grains’s strategic. From the first

time where Diamond Grains first released, they were actually planning to do only online

selling so they only did the online PR also the promotion by themselves. In order to save

cost, also using the word-of-mouth from customer. Right now Diamond Grains have

added more distribution channel like Top-Supermarket, 7-eleven, Central Food Hall, Big

C and healthy food/Organic shop due to the increasing popularity and customer’s

feedback.

Operational CRM

In service automation where they use the website for receiving a feedback and taking an

order from customer. There will be a menu and what product they are looking for

customer to click also the e-mail integration e.g. once an order is ready for shipment, an

automated e-mail will inform the customer.

Analytical CRM

By having their own website, Diamond Grains can easily track and collect customer’s

data like a purchase history, customer’s profile. To find out what type of customer they

are. How old are they? If they are older, Diamond Grains can inform them about a special

offer for a specific product or where are they living? Where are the nearby place selling

Diamond Grains just so they can inform the special offer by sending an e-mail to

customer.

Recommendation

● The website seem to be not effective enough so they may change the website

layout or use another website builder. The menu on the website look complicated

also the color of the website is too dark.

● For another channel, there should be Diamond Grains available in Tesco Lotus

since Tesco Lotus is everywhere and crowded.

● Add more CRM analytics, the data mining. Find the CRM software for data

warehousing in order to check the product and items in storage by using

technology instead of being manual.

● The used of twitter to communicate with customer can be more professional