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Sustainability Material Issue 10 Pursuing Customer Satisfaction and Trust
Objectives
Promote and reinforce customer-oriented business activities by improving customer support quality and the value of products and services.
| Indicators (2030) | Reflection of customer opinions in all products and services so that customers will continue to choose them |
|---|---|
| Progress (2022 results) |
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| Globally Common Measures to 2030 |
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So that we may leverage inquiries received from customers to develop new products and improve our products and services, such inquiries are registered in a database operating under a strict personal information management system and shared across the Company through an information sharing system that excludes personal information.
Items that are considered impactful to customer satisfaction and product use, and insights gleaned from contact with customers are reported daily to top management- and development-related departments in the form of the VOC*1 Daily Letter. Through such efforts, Lion works to improve customer support quality by gaining an understanding of the customer’s perspective and by quickly considering and responding through improvement measures. In 2022, we sent out 240 VOC Daily Letters.
Customer feedback comes from a wide range of sources, including not only telephone calls and emails, but also SNSs*2 and the like. An internal dedicated organization (The Consumer Service Center) interprets and analyzes such this feedback and proactively disseminates information gleaned from it to the relevant departments.
*1 VOC: Voice of Customers
*2 SNS: Social networking services (Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
More information about how our customer feedback is put to concrete use is available here [Japanese]
In the course of developing and providing products and services, Lion places the utmost priority on customer satisfaction. At the same time, by implementing environmental conservation activities and further enhancing the corporate governance system, we aim to ensure the high level of trustworthiness that stakeholders expect. Currently, government agencies, consumer groups and business associations are working together to promote customer-oriented management initiatives at companies. In January 2017, Lion voluntarily declared that it would proactively work toward customer-oriented management, and we report progress on this front on our website and to the Consumer Affairs Agency. Lion’s voluntary declaration of customer-oriented management was revised to reflect the corporate philosophy introduced in 2021, and published on its website in March 2022.
More information about Lion’s customer-oriented management declaration is available here [Japanese]
Lion received the Minister of State’s Award in the Good Practices of Consumer-Oriented Management Awards in 2020, and in 2021, won the Selection Committee Chairman’s Award together with Kao Corporation. This award recognizes companies that have made a consumer-oriented management declaration and implemented outstanding initiatives based on such declarations.
Spurred on by this award, Lion will continue advancing consumer-oriented management and contribute to the realization of a sustainable society.
The Consumer Service Center receives an enormous volume of customer inquiries every year. In 2022, we received approximately 81,000 inquiries (excluding those sent to direct-to-consumer sales divisions), 95% of the previous year’s volume. By content, questions about product use, retail outlets that carry Lion products, product quality, safety and other topics accounted for approximately 70% of all inquiries, while complaints and inquiries regarding problems and similar topics accounted for around 30%.
Going forward, we will continue aiming to provide an environment that facilitates customer inquiries while responding to inquires in a sincere and timely manner. Contact information for inquiries by phone or email is available on the customer support [Japanese] page of Lion’s website.
A list of contact points by topic is available here [Japanese].
Inquiries by Type (2022)
The customer support [Japanese] page of Lion’s Japanese-language website offers answers and solutions to common customer questions and problems as well as examples of products improved based on customer feedback, attracting considerable customer traffic. In addition, to customers that contact us by mail, we send a living information newsletter that includes content related to common customer questions and seasonal living tips, such as those from Lion’s Meisters of Daily Life, as well as recommended articles on the Lidea website.
Going forward, we will continue to provide useful information to customers.
Examples of products developed or improved based on customer feedback are available here [Japanese].
Lion strives to hire and develop the necessary human resources and foster an open and frank corporate culture in order to create innovative products and services that provide a high level of value to customers.
We are working to foster a corporate culture in which all employees think and act based on an understanding of the customer’s perspective.
We hold events for new graduate hires and product development staff, etc., in which they listen to recordings of customer inquiry calls or handle such calls themselves to experience hearing directly from customers. These events help participants understand the importance of the Company’s contact points with customers and serve as an impetus to think about customer perspectives in their work. Furthermore, we report the status of customer inquiries at regular meetings in related departments and morning briefings at operating sites (offices, research institutes and plants) to share such information internally.
Going forward, we will work to further enhance employee awareness in order to better provide products and services based on customer perspectives.
We are working to foster a corporate culture in which all employees think and act based on an understanding of the customer’s perspective. As part of our response to Japan’s severe demographic graying, we have a set of equipment that simulates the physical conditions of old age on hand at all times at the Consumer Service Center. By listening to feedback from our senior customers and wearing the simulation equipment while looking at product labels or holding product containers, we strive to deepen our customer insight and foster consideration and understanding of seniors and all customers among our human resources. These insights and considerations are put to use in product development, customer support and communications.
We are expanding the range of these efforts to include not only staff involved in product development, but the communicators that staff our phone lines and the Meisters of Daily Life engaged in communication efforts.
We hold phone service training in which customer support [Japanese] phone operators learn the skills to quickly and accurately understand and respond to the issues that customers seeking support have as well as a broad knowledge of Lion products and related topics. Specifically, we offer training in which operators discuss a wide range of case studies to mutually reinforce their skills, study groups focused on the health and living issues behind products, and training in pronunciation and word choice to make themselves easier for customers to understand over the phone in order to enhance communication.
We have the results of these activities evaluated by a third party and strive to provide service that will better satisfy customers. In addition, we have launched two systems that enable us to resolve customers’ problems 24/7, 365 days a year: a product retail distributor search service (February 2021) and a chatbot system (April 2021).
Lion monitors its corporate brand penetration with the help of a market research company. The survey shown below examines the likelihood of product users recommending Lion products and services, the degree to which they feel they need such products and their desire to and their preferences at the time of questioning (for the purposes of the study, the Lion product users targeted were male and female general consumers over the age of 16). We will continue to gather objective data on customer opinions in order to provide high-quality products and services.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020*1 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall number of survey respondents | 752 | 784 | 783 | 773 | 783 |
| Of these, current product users | 644 | 641 | 664 | 628 | 640 |
| Response rate*2(%) | 85.6 | 81.8 | 84.8 | 81.2 | 81.7 |
| Recommendation rate*3(%) | 43.6 | 43.1 | 47.6 | 40.0 | 44.7 |
Data from “Brand Strategy Survey,” Nikkei Research Inc.
*1 Overall scores of hygiene product suppliers increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
*2 Refers to the percentage of total survey respondents who reported that they currently use such products and services.
*3 Refers to the percentage of current users who intend to recommend the products and services.
We maintain mechanisms for responding to customer opinions via customer support hotlines and marketing divisions at our overseas Group companies, as well.
Since 2004, Lion Corporation (Korea) has responded to customer opinions and requests in accordance with its customer inquiry response regulations via a customer support division. Quarterly reports on customer inquiries are made to management, and important requests are reported to management immediately.