Globally operating companies are strengthening their efforts to enhance sustainability, not only in-house but in their supply chains as well. As such, customers' expectations for the OMRON Group to fulfill its responsibility in this area are on the rise. In the electronics industry, more companies are asking their suppliers to comply with the Code of Conduct established by RBA, Responsible Business Alliance*.
Amid this global supply chain trend, business segments and HQ departments work together at the OMRON Group. Specifically, the Group conducts self-assessments using the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) provided by RBA in order to confirm its status of compliance with RBA standards in five categories: Labor, health & safety, environment, ethics, and management system.
In fiscal 2022, we surveyed and assessed the current status of 24 OMRON Group production sites in Japan, China, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America, using the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) from the RBA.
We at the OMRON Group will continue to take measures to ensure that all products and services we provide with customers are sustainable in social and environmental aspects.
We are seeing an increase in the number of customers who require that third-party organizations conduct evaluations of our overall sustainability initiatives.
Our production sites in Vietnam and Dalian, China, receive RBA third-party audits, and we report the results to our customers upon request. Our production site in Dalian, China received Platinum certification, the highest medal, for two consecutive years in 2022 and 2023.
We also receive a sustainability evaluation as the OMRON Group from EcoVadis*1 (France). In 2023, we won Platinum certification, rated within the top 1% of companies evaluated, with overall score of 78-100 points. We share these evaluation results through the EcoVadis platform with customers upon requests, to contribute to their sustainability.
Regarding climate and water-related issues, we are contributing to customers' environmental initiatives through the CDP*2 supply chain questionnaire.
Industrial Automation Business (IAB), which offers control equipment and factory automation systems, is working to help customers to realize innovation in manufacturing with a wide range of OMRON products, applications that connect the products, combined with services and support.
There is an increasing demand for services and support on production floors with drastic changes in social environment, such as technical innovation seen in robots and IoT, as well as labor shortage. In order to respond to these needs, we use our own proprietary network spanning countries around the world to provide extensive service and support tailored to customers' business processes, ranging from equipment design through to installation and maintenance.
In terms of global manufacturing, we have the same concerns and worries as our customers as regards our overseas production floors and daily operations. There is a time difference, languages are different, we can see each other. We sympathize with such customer concerns and annoyances, and we are aiming to eliminate these.
Accordingly, so that we could more rapidly and seamlessly provide support in resolving local manufacturing issues to our customers who are expanding their business worldwide, in April 2018 we established the Consultation Desk service with the aim of functioning as a service network hub connecting OMRON overseas service locations.
At OMRON, we already have a network of over 150 locations in 40 countries worldwide, making up a global support system. However, regional requests for service support that were previously cross-border were either handled by customers directly contacting their local OMRON base, or by OMRON sales representatives contacting them individually. In order to carry this out more effectively and promptly, we have put in place a global liaison function at our sales headquarters in Japan, Europe, the Americas, Greater China, and the Asia Pacific region. Additionally, we have enhanced our cross-border support system that provides backup to customers, and this includes a goal of responding to requests within 48 hours of receipt.
We are a specialist group that provides support for manufacturing, and we will continue to evolve every day with the aim of improving the global competitiveness of our customers.
Global Service Support Catalog
To the customers expanding their business overseas, IAB wants them to feel assured in using OMRON's control equipment anywhere and anytime. To this end, IAB identified nearly 20 core services and support, visualizing the service provision status, not only in Japan but at each global area, and started offering them the latest information. Moreover, IAB is working to minimize the customers' workload and concerns in different multinational procedures, by establishing the stronger structure to link OMRON's global sites with each other, to closely assist customers.
[Japan]
While most customer support centers in Japan target an 80% customer satisfaction level, OMRON has set a higher goal in pursuit of 90%-plus customer satisfaction and works day and night to improve customer satisfaction. In particular, we place importance on ease of connection and capabilities to proactively make technical propositions and recommendations.
We have received a certain level of positive feedback for ease of connection and will continue our efforts here.
In the area of product technology proposal capabilities, based on customer feedback regarding solutions to social issues such as labor shortages, we intend to enhance our response capabilities further at call centers with respect to controllers, motion, and imaging for industrial robots and application-type products. We stepped up our efforts to reduce the burden on customers by expanding the number of contact points available to respond to inquiries from fiscal 2021. We will continue to improve the overall level of our operators, not only in responding to inquiries, but also in proposing further improvements based on each customer's situation.
In response to changing customer needs, we developed a new consultation channel (chat response) for dealers in FY2020. We began expanding this channel to general customers in January 2022. In the future, we will introduce a new Customer Effort Scale (CES) survey and make improvements based on feedback from dealers and general customers. This feedback will lead to expanded services and improved satisfaction.
[China]
Since we began surveys in 2014, we have been striving for 95%-plus customer satisfaction every year. Each quarter, we measure customer satisfaction. More specifically, we send a survey to customers via e-mail, asking for a five-point evaluation. We also ask for areas they liked and areas requiring improvement. We share these responses within our call center, considering each issue and forming responses for improvement.
IAB offers the latest information and services online so that customers can obtain necessary information at any time, including product information, users' manuals, CAD, downloadable certification documents, as well as search function to find recommended replacing models for discontinued items.
OMRON proposes solutions utilizing robots and IoT to revolutionize our customers' manufacturing sites by addressing such issues as labor shortages in factories as well as the succession of skilled workers' skills. We will also continue to enhance information such as case studies of customers who have realized advanced manufacturing.
We will continue to take on the challenge of creating new services and offering support by leveraging our unique technology and expertise developed at our own factories, as well as our experience from the front-line perspective. In doing so, we aim to keep up with further technological evolution and the creation of innovative applications.
Also, we offer on-demand webinars that can be viewed anytime and anywhere. In this way, we keep evolving with our customers to provide services that every customer can use comfortably.
OMRON Healthcare Co., Ltd. (HCB) offers customer support customized to each region in which the company’s global sites are located.
In Japan, we have established a Customer Support Center that handles customer inquiries, accessory sales, and repair requests through a single point of contact. The center received roughly 190,000 inquiries in fiscal 2023.
While customer inquiries have traditionally been by telephone in the main, more recently customers are using a variety of other means, including contact forms on our websites, chatbots. In particular, we receive a large number of visits to our FAQ webpages. In light of this trend, we focus on improving customer convenience by reflecting the questions most frequently asked by customers in our FAQ and by making navigation on the website as easy to understand as possible.
We also endeavor to create better products and services by providing customer feedback and suggestions to our product planning, R&D, and production departments.
HCB will continue to listen to customer feedback, striving for higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Since conducting surveys beginning in fiscal 2013, results have improved every year. Satisfaction for fiscal 2023 reached 98.5%.
Our call center in China has set the following policy and are working on key initiatives to maintain and improve customer satisfaction.
