03.02.2010

Improving Customer Satisfaction

By: Lindsay Alessi, Uta Spinger

Kazuo Mitsui is in charge of Influence Activities on the board of the Japan SAP Users’ Group (JSUG). He talks about cooperation with the SAP Japan Customer Satisfaction Improvement Team and how they have been able to establish an open dialog between SAP and customers.

Kazuo Mitsui, President Yoursoft, the Mitsui Mining & Smelting Group, and Director for Influence Activities on the JSUG board. (photo: JSUG)

SAP.info: Mr Mitsui, Influence activities play a major role in the Japanese SAP User Group? What is the main goal of these activities?

Kazuo Mitsui: The key principle is to develop a relationship of mutual trust and understanding between SAP and JSUG, and hence Japanese customers as a whole. This is the ideal starting point for productive discussion and goes hand in hand with improving customer satisfaction. JSUG Influence activities bring the voices of Japanese users to SAP.

Transparency and direct dialog are integral to this process and JSUG needs to be kept aware of SAP’s customer strategy, both at SAP Japan and SAP as a whole. We need to know what steps are being taken to improve customer satisfaction within the organization. At SAP Japan, there’s a dedicated team that deals with these issues, called the Customer Satisfaction (CS) Improvement Team. It’s crucial we understand their role, strategy, and future plans. This way, if there are any issues that need to be discussed or modified, we can tackle them together.

Through the CS Improvement Team at SAP Japan, employees from different SAP lines of business come together with JSUG members for open and honest discussion on the importance of customer satisfaction and how to improve each line of business. These viewpoints are also passed on to other SAP employees so that everyone is aware of JSUG issues and what can be done to address them on a day-to-day basis. With these kinds of forums in place, I think SAP has great potential to improve customer satisfaction in the future.

SAP.info: How are JSUG’s Influence Activities organized? Do you have regular meetings with the CS Improvement Team?

Kazuo Mitsui: Yes, we have monthly meetings with the team. This process is working extremely well and we’re very satisfied with our collaboration with SAP. We decide on activities at a joint Influence/CS Meeting in the first month of each quarter, where we check the status of the CS survey and any JSUG surveys from the previous quarter. If there are issues, we discuss them together and identify appropriate actions. In the second month of the quarter, we meet with representatives of each line of business at SAP Japan for a more detailed discussion on improving customer satisfaction in that area. In the final month, we look at activities from the whole quarter and gather everything together in the Influence/CS report, which is distributed throughout JSUG and to all SAP Japan employees.

We also have monthly meetings with Garrett Ilg, president of SAP Japan, as well as the CS Improvement Team and SAP Active Global Support. This is important for transparency, as all stakeholders get to see what’s going on.

Next Page: The Main Issues that Customers Raise

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