■NEC Fielding, Ltd. |
Community-based contact center model |
| NEC Fielding used to have only two contact centers serving Eastern and Western Japan, but has since reallocated its resources to establish nine contact centers nationwide. NEC Fielding has been promoting rigorous process improvement and standardization to satisfy rising customer expectations, and in converting to the community-based contact center model, the company is stationing service personnel who are familiar with the respective regions and understand the requirements of the residents to speed up response times and optimize service levels to increase customer satisfaction. The company also provides a complementary support system to help its personnel effectively handle the surge in incoming calls during peak seasons. |
■The Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank, Ltd. |
Unique and individualized service model |
| The Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank has constantly strived to identify the requirements of each individual customer to deliver services where customers want/need them while contributing to the society at the same time. Besides increasing the convenience of banking through its drive-through branches, the Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank also provides one-to-one assistance at its ATMs, offers loans in support of single mothers, divorced women, and so on. It is without doubt that the bank will continue to enhance its customized services and move beyond the established conventions of the banking industry. |
■Suma Aqualife Park, Kobe (Wesco Co., Ltd.) |
Research results utilization model |
| After the Suma Aqualife Park became privatized, management began to take an active interest in customer-centric relations management, seeking to improve customer services through conducting customer satisfaction surveys, setting up the “Smile Box” (customer feedback box), and so on. Being privately owned, Suma Aqualife Park has the autonomy to organize special programs/events and perform a variety of services to attract more visitors. Some examples include providing smartphone guidance systems, offering its facilities/attractions for rental, extending its operating hours at night, on New Year’s Eve and other occasions. The aquarium is an inspiration to other amusement parks in how it dedicates itself to biological researches and study activities, and uses those results to theme programs/events for customers. |
■Sagamihara City |
Resident-oriented improvement model |
| From its basic management principle to create a people-friendly and business-friendly city, the regional government at Sagamihara City has been promoting the Sagamihara CRM model to realize resident-centric municipal management. The Sagamihara CRM model uses Facebook and other social media platforms to collect resident feedback on daily life issues such as garbage disposal, nursery/daycare, and applies techniques such as text data mining to understand the real concerns of residents. This helps the city to drive meaningful improvements and work towards its management principle based on the fundamentals of representing the residents’ perspective in municipal governance and administration. Sagamihara City is a good example that demonstrates how regional governments can practice customer-centric relations management. |
■Panasonic Corporation Appliances Company |
Smart home electronics pioneer model |
| To bring more value-added products and services to its customers, Panasonic Corporation has been focusing on the expansion of its smart home appliance line through maintaining its connections with customers post-sales to understand the trends in user behaviors and needs. Based on such data, Panasonic Corporation is providing technical support for customers who are not used to operating home appliances remotely from smartphones, improving the precision of its services by accessing error history information of smart-home products stored in the cloud, so on and so forth. It is certain that the company will continue to optimize its customer relationships with its strong capabilities in data management to ensure that its smart-home products and services can be easily operated by all. |
■Vision Inc. CLT (Customer Loyalty Team) |
Multi-channel/support staff development model |
| With the rapid growth of its new global Wi-Fi business, Vision has expanded its customer support operations to offer support via multiple channels including e-mails and social networking services (SNS). Vision has also stepped up its efforts in staff training and development to equip them with the necessary skills to handle different commercial materials for comprehensive support. The company started to focus on customer retention activities last year, and has made further progress to roll out the multi-support system this year. All this contributed towards a higher e-newsletter readership and an increase in repeat business. |
■Lifenet Insurance Company Contact Center
<<Fujisankei Business Eye Award>> |
Direct life insurance CC-based CRM model |
| Successful customer-centric relations management always starts with understanding who the customers are. Lifenet Insurance is recognized for designing its products/services and defining its customer touchpoints based on this understanding. In its business operations, Lifenet Insurance also takes measures to ensure that action plans from top management are understood and implemented at the field level. It is important yet so difficult to involve all employees in working towards the goal of building good customer relationships, but this is a model example that demonstrates how effective a company has been in doing so. |
■Locus Telecommunications, Inc.
<<Oboshi Award>> |
Prepaid customer support model |
| In the prepaid mobile communications industry where it is inherently difficult to acquire customer information, Locus Telecommunications has made good its commitment to understand the needs of its invisible customers to provide the best possible telecommunication solutions to their expectations by constantly improving its services and operations through customer relations management activities such as collecting and analyzing consumer feedback from its call centers, conducting online surveys, analyzing and tapping into the voice of the customer (VOC) from social media and other community events . This is a useful case study for other industries that also serve customers who cannot be distinctly identified. |
