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For Customers

Main Activities and Results （Fiscal2013)

At NEC, one of the ways we improve the level of customer service is to use customer feedback from CS surveys and customer contact points to identify issues and study ways to improve them, thereby leading to improvements in the related business divisions.

Improvement Initiatives Based on CS Surveys and Opinions Received From Clients and Consumers

Every year, NEC conducts the NEC Group Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire, targeting corporate and public-sector clients in Japan. Around 2,000 offices were surveyed in fiscal 2013. The survey is designed to find out how these clients evaluate NEC, with responses reflected in future improvement initiatives.

In fiscal 2013, in addition to these activities, NEC conducted a fresh analysis of the results of customer satisfaction questionnaires for the past five years to explore the question of “What are customers seeking from NEC?” The analysis revealed that customers have the highest expectations for NEC in terms of “improving response speeds” in the basic activities category and “providing proactive proposals that lead to the creation of customer value” in the customer value enhancement category.

Responding Faster

In response, NEC has set “making first responses to customer (or internal) inquiries within 24 hours” as a Company-wide goal. To this end, NEC has focused on implementing quick response initiatives.

Quick Response Initiatives

Workplace Roundtables Held
This in-house poster promotes
quick response initiatives

NEC conducted Workplace Roundtables to explore measures necessary to implement quick responses at each worksite and execute those measures. Roundtables were held at each worksite including back office departments with no direct contact with customers. (2,273 teams and 28,457 people participated in this initiative.)

NEC received many positive comments from participating employees, including: “I feel that the roundtables were highly constructive because we were able to discuss and develop an awareness of fundamental issues that we are susceptible to as an organization, from the perspective of quick responses.” and “At the roundtables, we shared information on the fact that many people feel that responses from the staff members who fielded their inquiries are not fast enough. This gave me the chance to reconsider my own responses from my counterpart’s standpoint.” NEC believes that these roundtables have improved every individual’s awareness of the need for quick responses

Quick Response Award Established

To achieve its “CS No.1” goal, NEC established the NEC CSR AWARDS 2012 Quick Response Award. This award recognizes activities by divisions, projects, teams and individuals that achieve outstanding performance through the execution of quick responses.

An example of awards

Special Quick Response Award Initiatives to Shorten Customer Inquiry-to-Response Time IT Software Business Department, NEC Corporation
Recipients receive the president's
award at the CSR Convention

The IT Software Business Department offers product support services by working closely with the Customer Support Center (CSC), which serves as the contact point for inquiries, and internal product development and maintenance divisions. Given that support must be provided for a wide array of products, with more than 3,000 employees involved, the challenge was to provide responses that satisfy customers in a timely manner.

 

 

In doing so, the most important factor was to enhance the technical knowledge and skills of CSC staff. If a greater share of responses could be handled by the CSC staff alone, quick responses could be provided to customers, while lessening the burden on development divisions by reducing the number of inquiries forwarded to them. Guided by this thinking, the entire business division worked to shorten the inquiry-to-response time.

 

As a result, the rate of first responses within 24 hours improved from 82.2% in fiscal 2010 to 86.9%, and the rate of effective responses within 24 hours improved from 62.7% in fiscal 2010 to 64.2%.

Comment from Award Recipient

Our activities stand out because they involve participation by the entire organization, which is made up of more than 3,000 people; entrenchment of an organizational culture that attaches importance to responding quickly to inquiries; and systematic management of progress against ambitious targets that are constantly set one notch higher. Looking ahead, we will remain focused on quick responses as we strive to make further enhancements. (Mr. Nobuyuki Nihira, IT Software Business Division) *Post is as of the receipt of the award.

Company-Wide Activities

Workplace Roundtables have identified requests for shortening the time needed to search for internal product and service contacts. In response, NEC expanded and upgraded search functions by unifying product information and enhancing the product database as part of the “One NEC production visualization” drive. Efforts were also focused on strengthening contact points for projects straddling multiple divisions and enhancing related support frameworks.
NEC will verify the achievements of these initiatives through customer satisfaction surveys in fiscal 2014, and will reflect the results in efforts to further strengthen activities going forward.

Instituting a Customer-Oriented Corporate Culture

People are the basis of developing and supplying products and services that deliver high customer satisfaction. At NEC, we offer various kinds of education and training by occupation and grade so that we can develop employees capable of taking notice of issues and making improvements. Moreover, NEC implements measures to recognize CS improvement initiatives undertaken from the standpoint of the customer, as well as the "customer beyond the customer" (i.e., as general public and as consumers), with the aim of further motivating employees.

*Please follow this link for further details on CS education and training.

CS Education and Training for All NEC Group Employees

Education and Training to Foster a Customer-Oriented Mindset — What NEC Places Importance on —

It is crucial to ensure that all employees adhere to the "Better Products, Better Services" motto, which is one of the NEC Group Core Values, so NEC can realize its goal of being a leading global company under NEC Group Vision 2017. Furthermore, NEC believes that CS awareness and a customer-oriented mindset are cultivated by continuously deepening employees’ recognition of the importance of CS. Accordingly, in fiscal 2013, NEC worked to reinforce and expand its existing education and awareness programs to further strengthen this recognition among employees.

 

NEC considered what was necessary for the sort of CS that is truly appreciated by customers and encapsulated this in the Universal CS Mind, whose five keywords express the key points for realizing customer satisfaction. These are based on past success stories, and customer feedback.

 

These five keywords are speed, communication, hospitality, proactiveness, and professionalism.

Besides Japan, NEC has also conducted CS education and training overseas beginning with the Asia-Pacific in April 2012. This education and training has been extended to the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), North America and Latin America. (52,000 participants)

 

Participants provided comments including, “The training reminded me that CS is determined based on the customer’s standards. I want to take extra care on a daily basis not to become complacent with merely fulfilling my duties by the book;” and “I felt that awareness and action by everyone, including business partners, are needed, and that CS must be properly and systematically executed by NEC as a whole.” At the same time, many participants said “I would like to learn from more specific examples of successes and failures.” In response, NEC launched an internal “CS No. 1 Activities” portal site to present such examples, along with quick response initiatives.

Building a Customer-Oriented Organization Through the Ability to “Take Notice”

The ability of people to take notice of issues has a crucial bearing on improving CS and quality. NEC has developed a systematic training program focused on “taking notice” for the purpose of reducing human error and enhancing communication skills. Since fiscal 2008, this training has been provided within the Group, and has been attended by roughly 7,000 people.

NEC has received many comments from participants stating that they would like to continuously receive training to ensure that the training does not end with just a single training session. Accordingly, NEC began developing and conducting “Re-mind Courses” centered on review and case study work. There is particularly strong demand for the training course on reducing human error, which is part of the training program focused on “taking notice.” By nurturing instructors and customizing content, NEC has implement training featuring highly compelling content tailored to worksite needs.

In fiscal 2013, NEC gave a presentation based on the theme of “Initiatives to Reduce Human Error from a Human Factors Standpoint” at “Quality Forum 2012” hosted by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers in November 2012. NEC presented its initiatives to reduce human error, and was commended highly by participants who noted that “the presentation was highly instructive.” (Photo: At the presentation)

 

NEC has found that neglect of basic quality has led to serious incidents in recent years. In fiscal 2014, NEC will develop training programs that enhance organizational capacity through the power of taking notice, while elevating this concept as an integral part of its organizational culture.

People-centered Education to Foster a Customer-Oriented Mindset

Internal Awards for Outstanding CS Activities

NEC has established an internal awards system, with the aim of fostering a corporate culture where employees find it worthwhile to help customers and share the joy of helping customers within the NEC Group. NEC provides internal awards to business groups and individuals who work from the customer's standpoint and are applauded by customers. The awards are granted once a year, with criteria including the extent of collaboration with other divisions and the difficulty of activities.

An example of awards

CS Improvement Activities at Call Center for East Japan Railway Company (JR East) (Japan)　NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation

Initially, NEC operated large numbers of contact points for each region in the JR East service area, and because of this the customer had to search for the correct contact point. To solve this problem, NEC adopted one telephone number for all the contact points so that all calls are put through to the Customer Support Center. As a result, station staff don’t have to deal with these inquiries, which has reduced their workload at train stations, allowing them to utilize their time more effectively for ensuring the safety of railway passengers.

 

Furthermore, in call center operations, the company focused efforts on training to ensure that customer service representatives could provide support as railway professionals. The training content covers knowledge of railways, operating rules and other related topics. The company implemented measures such as improving response rates and postings of personnel.

Comment from award recipient

In the course of training call center personnel, we translated complicated operational rules into an easy-to-understand manual, to ensure that call center personnel could function as railway professionals. By pooling everyone’s knowledge, we surmounted issues one step at time, and helped to enhance JR East’s service quality. (Yasushi Kashiwa, Office Service Business Department, NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation) *Post is as of the receipt of the award

(Overseas) Improvement Activities Reflecting Customer Satisfaction Surveys of the Multimedia Product Group NEC India Pvt. Ltd.

Besides IT and network solutions, NEC India also handles projectors, monitors, and other multimedia products. In a challenging market environment, this subsidiary has made NEC one of the leading projector brands in India.

In 2011, NEC India conducted its first customer satisfaction survey of multimedia products, finding that 46% of respondents were "dissatisfied." The company thereafter set about classifying the causes of such dissatisfaction into five themes and undertaking improvement initiatives. In fiscal 2013, for example, the company increased the number of service centers from 6 to 66. It also shortened replacement part delivery times from 45 days to 15 days by directly obtaining replacement parts from Japan, not via Singapore as before.

 

Furthermore, to ensure that customers continue to choose NEC, the company took a range of measures besides merely eliminating sources of dissatisfaction. These measures included extending the projector maintenance period by 1 year to 3 years, and regularly placing calls to customers to obtain their feedback. The company also undertook quick response initiatives to resolve all issues within two working days.

 

These efforts translated into far better customer satisfaction in 2012. In that poll, dissatisfaction dropped from 46% to 16%, while satisfaction climbed from 14% to 69%. Many customers also expressed their thanks via email and verbally.

Comment from award recipient

India is an expansive country, with many different languages spoken in each region, and transportation difficulties in remote areas. Against this backdrop, we came up with improvement measures based on customer satisfaction survey results. Owing to these measures, customer satisfaction improved from 14% in 2011 to 69% in 2012. We are delighted that many customers also expressed their thanks via e-mail. (Pooja Dhir, NEC India Pvt. Ltd.) *Post is as of the receipt of the award.