About us > CSR Activities > Social Responsibility > Together with Customers > Customer Satisfaction Improvement Efforts
Customer Satisfaction Improvement Efforts
To keep customers satisfied, KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan, a domestic sales subsidiary, provides prompt, accurate and uniform service through the extensive domestic service network of the Contact Center (which handles customer inquiries and requests for product support), service centers and sales partner companies.
The Contact Center responds swiftly and accurately to customer inquiries and requests for product service or repair, and at the same time communicates customer opinions to relevant departments so that they can be utilized for product development.
Through an extensive service network of 72 service centers and about 600 sales partner companies throughout Japan, our customer engineers provide product support services to customers. To enhance the value of the services provided to our customers, customer engineers seek to think and act from the customer's perspective, while at the same time promoting the standardization of services. They also seek to acquire communication skills needed to accurately understand customers' needs and desires, solution skills needed to propose appropriate solutions, and technical skills needed to ensure the safe and reliable operation of KYOCERA Document Solutions products for customers.
Efforts of the Contact Center
To ensure quick and accurate resolution of customer inquiries and problems, minor issues are supported extensively by telephone. Depending on the nature of the inquiry or the severity of the problem, the operator relays the case to technical staff, and thereby reduces the downtime incurred by the customer's machine.
Customer inquiries are compiled in a database (approximately 1,000 inquiries are added to the database per day) and used by relevant departments as feedback to improve response capabilities and to develop products reflecting customer needs. By March 2010, we successfully established a system that ensures 22% of all incoming customer service inquiries are resolved during the first telephone contact.
Customer Engineers' Efforts
Customer engineers pursue various efforts to promote customer-oriented services. As part of such efforts, customer engineers call customers before each visit to advise on their estimated arrival time, and before commencing any work at a customer's premises they advise the customer on how long the work is expected to take. Furthermore, before each on-site support service, customer engineers contact customers to ask about the details of the customer's problems and requests so that they can provide the best possible solution when they visit the customer. After finishing the service work, in addition to providing customers with a Service Report, customer engineers take time to communicate with customers to receive customer feedback. If they encounter concerns from the customer during the conversation, they propose a solution. Thus, our customer engineers are vigorously working to improve customer satisfaction.
Efforts Implemented in Fiscal 2010
Contact Center
To handle customer inquiries quickly and appropriately, the Contact Center has worked on improving the response rate (accessibility to the telephone inquiry service). To handle customer inquiries and issues efficiently during busy hours, the Center took various measures, including reducing the processing time after each call and increasing the number of shift workers. Thanks to these efforts, in fiscal 2010 the response rate to customer calls was improved to 98.5% (a situation of 985 out of 1,000 calls from customers being responded to immediately).
The rate of problem resolution via telephone (the one-stop resolution rate) was improved to 21.1%, up 2.5% from fiscal 2009. In fiscal 2011, we will strive to maintain a one-stop resolution rate of above 20%. The Contact Center also worked on enhancing customer support, for instance by calling back the customers who made inquiries at later dates to check on subsequent developments. In fiscal 2010, we made 3,600 follow-up calls (2,400 calls in fiscal 2009) and received words of thanks from 30% of the customers.
Telephone Inquiries Received at Contact Center
Customer Engineers
Customer engineers strive to prevent the occurrence of failures by making full use of the ECOSYS NET, which enables remote monitoring of machines installed at customer sites. Before their visits to customers, customer engineers check, via the ECOSYS NET, the operation status of the machines they will service and plan their maintenance activities (including replacement of consumable parts) based upon real-time monitoring. By remotely monitoring toner levels in cartridges via the ECOSYS NET, it has become possible to supply customers with replacement toner before they run out. The ECOSYS NET also enables customer engineers to accurately understand each customer's use environment. Based on the information gathered via the ECOSYS NET, customer engineers propose recommendations for the optimal layout of office equipment.
Holding the "Service Contest CS Masters" Competition
Each year since Fiscal 2008, Kyocera Mita Japan's Corporate Business Strategy Planning Division has held a "Service Contest CS Masters" competition for customer engineers of KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan and its sales partners. This contest is held as part of the company's efforts to increase customer satisfaction through after-sales services.
In the contest, contestants perform the repair of a KYOCERA Document Solutions color MFP in 90 minutes. Contestants are judged on three elements: 1) ability to respond and communicate with the customer from the moment of arrival to leaving the customer site [communication skills]; 2) ability to accurately diagnose and troubleshoot problems [technical skills]; and 3) ability to propose appropriate solutions to customer's problems [solution skills]. Customer engineers compete on their customer service skills and customer response capabilities they use in their daily service activities. This contest is conducive to improving the quality of service and customer response capabilities of customer engineers.
In fiscal 2010, the contest was held in September, with participation by 50 customer engineers from KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan and 50 customer engineers from sales partner companies. We plan to hold the contest again in fiscal 2011.
Conducting Customer Surveys
To find out how customers feel about the Contact Center's and the customer engineers' responses, KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan conducted customer surveys twice in fiscal 2010. Questionnaires were sent to a total of 3,000 customers, with 600 customers responding.
According to the results from customer surveys on service attitude and performance of the Contact Center and customer engineers, the percentage of customers who said they were dissatisfied is on a steady decrease. However, since the satisfaction rate remains fixed at a certain level, we consider that it is necessary to redouble our efforts to improve customer satisfaction.
Response to questions regarding customer engineers' service attitude and performance
Response to questions regarding Contact Center' s service attitude and performance
Planned Future Activities
To ensure that customers use our products with peace of mind, we have introduced the "ECOSYS NET," a system that allows us to remotely monitor a customer's devices. In fiscal 2011, by making more effective use of the ECOSYS NET, we will establish a system that allows failure prediction information to be promptly relayed to customer engineers, so that they can take actions before service request calls come in to the support desk of the Contact Center. In line with our policy of promoting preventive maintenance, we ensure that customer engineers plan and perform periodic preventive maintenance based on the information obtained via the ECOSYS NET. In fiscal 2011, we plan to introduce ECOSYS NET at 18,000 customers' sites.
About us > CSR Activities > Social Responsibility > Together with Customers > Customer Satisfaction Improvement Efforts
