Reflecting Customer Concerns in Customer Response and Support

  The Yamaha Group has established an after-service system for customers, based on the Yamaha Compliance Code of Conduct, which drives our response to customer inquiries and request. In April 2008 we set up a Customer Support Department within the Domestic Sales & Marketing Division At the same time, we opened our Customer Communications Center, which houses a help desk for each of our products. These changes have improved a support structure designed to strengthen customer convenience.

  The Yamaha group continues to improve its support structure to respond seamlessly to customer inquiries.

  For example, we call each help desk clearly by the product name in question. We have a Piano Helpdesk; we have a Digital Piano & Keyboard Helpdesk. All help desks in Japan are tied into a telephone system that uses “Navi-dial” ^*1 as part of a unified customer support system. During fiscal 2009, we moved to a cloud-based management system. Managing data through network-based services ensures greater data safety, allows us to continually update our database based on changes in our business and in customer needs, and provides Yamaha with an extensible, flexible system. In October 2010, we introduced a text mining tool and developed a system to feed customers' opinions and requests back to the Group in real time. We started sharing the information in fiscal 2011. The tool is being used to improve product creation and services beyond our customers' expectations.

  While we are improving our customer response system, we have also adopted targets such as Response Rate^*2 (ease of contacting us by telephone) and time taken to respond to email inquiries. Using these indices helps us maintain and improve customer service quality. Navi-dial and other methods incorporated in our call center have allowed us to reach our fiscal 2010 goal of a 90% response rate. Our target for email response is to answer 95% or more of incoming mail on each operating day within 24 hours of its receipt (excluding Sundays and public holidays), and we achieved this target in fiscal 2011. We aim to increase our target to over 97% in fiscal 2012.

  Looking for even higher standards of customer service, we have committed resources to operator training in our call centers. To quickly resolve customer concerns or confusion, we have published a frequently asked questions section on our website, which we update regularly.

• *1 "Navi-dial Telephone System: A system that allows customers to call into our help desk at local phone calling rates from any location in Japan.
• *2 "Ratio of incoming calls answered by an operator.

  The Yamaha Group works to make effective use of our customer relationship management system. We collect and analyze opinions and requests from customers in our customer support department, discussing the results in monthly meetings attended by product development and quality assurance managers from each business division.

  In fiscal 2010, we moved forward with a system that captures customer feedback in a database, allowing each business location see updated customer opinions and requests in a visual format. As a result, we have been able to better use this information in related sales and product development activities, rapidly reflecting customer feedback in our business models.