Customer Satisfaction

• Initiatives to Improve Communication with Customers
• Advertising Activities
• Comprehensive Customer Support Online
• Activities to Improve the Satisfaction of Home Appliance Customers

Initiatives to Improve Communication with Customers

Activities

Hitachi values communications with customers. The sales and marketing divisions at Hitachi, Ltd. listen to customer feedback when developing management, product, and solution strategies. These divisions assign an account manager to each customer to help grow the business of the Hitachi Group. These account managers serve as points of customer contact with group companies, leading initiatives for improving communication with customers while working to build closer relationships between customers and account managers.

Strengthening Global Account Management

Hitachi has established the position of CMO in charge of Global Sales Transformation, Corporate Sales & Marketing Group and Head of Account Management Global Marketing and Sales Transformation to achieve sustainable global business growth, driven by the concepts of Digital, Green, and Innovation. Under this system, the role involves working closely with Business Units (BUs), group companies, and regional headquarters as One Hitachi beyond regional and business boundaries to enhance customer engagement by providing solutions to key customers and partners. As well as proceeding with the planning and implementation of sales strategies to develop new global businesses in the fields of Digital, Green, and Innovation, as a priority initiative, the group has, based on the Group Account Program, appointed a Group Account Manager representing the group for key customers worldwide to build strategic partnerships with key customers in cooperation with cross-BU account teams.

Digital Marketing

Hitachi created the One Hitachi CRM to manage Hitachi Group marketing information centrally. We are also consolidating the role of market analysis for the Hitachi Group on a global level. We promote digital marketing in cooperation with the Group Account Program by leveraging the information, for example, in planning business strategies for growth, customer targeting, creating more advanced proposals, understanding the state of communication with customers, and monitoring progress in the sales process.

Advertising Activities

Activities

Because Hitachi believes that advertising activities must show proper consideration for society as a whole, as well as comply with laws and regulations, we established the Advertising Guidelines. To ensure these guidelines are followed strictly at all business locations globally, even where languages and customs may vary, the guidelines include an Advertising Material Checklist. All items on the checklist are confirmed in multiple languages when creating advertisements.
When using social media, we conduct activities rooted in business ethics and legal compliance. Policies and guidelines have been established for employees to protect the Hitachi brand and not infringe on the rights of others. Educational activities are also carried out in the form of e-learning courses in Japanese, English, and Chinese regarding specific operational methods and risk countermeasures.
We noted no instances of violations of regulations or voluntary standards related to corporate advertising activities in fiscal 2023.

About Hitachi’s Social Media Activities

Comprehensive Customer Support Online

Activities

Hitachi offers comprehensive global customer support on its website to respond to voice of customer inquiries, opinions, requests, and claims. We take corrective actions and measures to prevent recurrence in the event of matters that we must address or resolve in connection with information received. We incorporate customer feedback when forming corrective actions or measures to prevent recurrence. Going forward, the Hitachi Group will continue to strengthen and improve global customer support/response-mechanisms among group companies to respond more quickly and accurately to customer’s feedback.

Activities to Improve the Satisfaction of Home Appliance Customers

Activities

The Customer Satisfaction Division of Home Appliances business provides services and solutions to improve the quality of life for people of all ages and regions. These initiatives are carried out under the slogan, 360°Happiness: More happy smiles to life for one and all. For example, in our home appliances business, we collect, store, and analyze data from connected home appliances to perform fault diagnostics, we are improving the accuracy of our after-sales service to resolve inconvenienced matters quickly for our customers. We also detect potential defects in the market quickly and carry out activities to improve product quality.
In fiscal 2023, about 1.97 million customer inquiries, repair requests, and dissatisfaction about washing machines, refrigerators, and other appliances were solved by the Customer Satisfaction Division through the calls and websites of the Customer Support Center and Repair Contact Center. We have been struggling a number of initiatives to respond better to inquiries and to reflect customer feedback in our company’s manufacturing. These initiatives include improving the connection rate of call center; creating a database about voice of the customers; and enhancing our website’s FAQ section.
We also conduct customer repair service evaluation surveys at approximately 90 service centers in Japan throughout the year. Based on the answers, we are improving after-sales services through CS training courses. In fiscal 2023, we received more than 29,000 customers responses to the questionnaire and we could achieve good satisfaction from 93.5% of respondents to our customer service.