Quality
Improving Customer Satisfaction
Basic Policy
Customer satisfaction has been a priority management principle of the Mitsubishi Electric Group since its founding. Inheriting this spirit, we collect feedback from our customers through customer satisfaction surveys as appropriate to the characteristics of each business operation, and incorporate customer opinions into product development, marketing strategies, and services.
We also strive to maintain customer satisfaction by strengthening our repair/service systems, providing effective staff training, and expanding access to information via our websites.
Flow of responses to customer inquiries (Mitsubishi Electric)
CS Activities by the Home Appliances Group (in Japan)
The Living Environment & Digital Media Equipment Group handles matters related to home appliances and carries out customer satisfaction (CS) improvement activities in Japan. It makes sure that customers across the country are satisfied with the Mitsubishi Electric product they purchase, and strives to increase the number of such satisfied customers.
The beginning of CS activities related to home appliances
The CS Department at Mitsubishi Electric was established in Japan in July 1993. In addition to assuring product quality and optimum product usability and functionality, the department engages in CS improvement activities with strong awareness of the significance of customer satisfaction. Mitsubishi Electric quickly proceeded to create the necessary culture, systems and tools that would enhance its products, marketing strategies, and services.
Each works conducts satisfaction surveys of its major products using questionnaires to product purchasers and questionnaires to employee monitors. The results of these surveys are shared within the Group and reflected on sales and development strategies.
Understanding customer satisfaction
A customer's selection, purchase, and use of a product involve a number of different departments, such as the development, manufacturing, sales, and service departments. Customer satisfaction cannot be achieved if a customer is discontented with any aspect of this process, or if there is any weakness in the departments concerned. Customer satisfaction increases in the following order.
- Assurance: The customer is assured that the product is not flawed or defective
- Contentment: The product satisfies the customer's needs and requirements
- Emotion: The customer acquires a new value from the product
The ultimate form of customer satisfaction is achieved when a product exceeds customer expectations and provides an emotional benefit. The key to achieving customer satisfaction is to therefore assess and satisfy customer expectations.
Customer checkpoints
Taking calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
To satisfy customer expectations, it is necessary to think of customers throughout the sales, service, development, and manufacturing stages, and to quickly detect and respond dynamically to signs of market changes. As one strategy to provide a response to customers in Japan when they require one, in October 1998, Mitsubishi Electric extended the service hours of its Japan Customer Relations Center to 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Previously the center responded to inquiries concerning product usage only during daytime hours from Monday through Saturday except on holidays.
Today, the Customer Relations Center and Service Call Center operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The Technical Support Call Center, which responds to technical inquiries from distributors, and the Repair Service Station, the stronghold of repair services operated by Mitsubishi Electric System & Service Co., Ltd., also respond to inquiries 365 days a year (excluding some regions).
As the relations center receives a wide array of inquiries every year due to the diversification of product functionality, we are constantly reinforcing staff members, and are making consistent efforts to provide proper training.
Customer Relations Center
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Service Call Center
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Repair Service Station(1)
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Repair Service Station(2)
System of reviewing customers' comments
The content and results of consultations and repair requests from customers and the details of technical inquiries are sent as feedback to the manufacturing works at the end of each day. They are used to improve both products under production and development, and to provide repair information to distributors.
Customer relations center
Customers' comments that are collected by the Customer Relations Center are entered into a database and analyzed in terms of trend, and the analysis results are regularly sent to relevant manufacturing plants, sales companies, and research institutes. Manufacturing plants and sales companies utilize this information in their ongoing efforts to improve existing products and to make websites, catalogs, and instruction manuals even easier to understand. Research institutes utilize the information to refine products that are under development. Particularly with respect to information that is obtained following the release of a new product, efforts are made to convey customers' expectations, wishes, and dissatisfactions regarding the new product to relevant departments in a timely manner, so they may review the feedback as quickly as possible.
At the same time, regular liaison meetings are held between each manufacturing plant and Customer Relations Center to identify medium-term issues that are brought to light by customers' comments and enhance their cooperation in collecting further information.
Manufacturing plants
Kirigamine FZ Series room air conditioner MSZ-FZ4021S
The mirA.I.+ moving eye function continuously delivers comfort to users at home.
At Shizuoka Works, where Mitsubishi Electric manufactures air conditioners, quality improvement efforts are made by arranging opportunities for development engineers to personally hear the opinions of customers and provide feedback to their product development. More specifically, Shizuoka Works actively invites questions and comments from customers, or when a quality issue occurs that is thought to be of high technical difficulty, directly visits the customer's home to inspect the product installation environment.
There are many cases where customers' comments have benefited product development. With air conditioners, most inquiries are related to how to use the product and problems with cooling and heating functions. Therefore, direct visits are made to customers' homes to personally hear their inquiries, and such visits are used to improve product quality by reflecting the results in design criteria or incorporating them into measures for improving product control specifications.
As an example, our unique sensory temperature control was developed based on customers' comments, with some customers saying the air conditioner is too weak, and others saying it overcools. We looked into this issue and found that in addition to ambient temperature, humidity and floor temperature also affect sensory temperature. With regard to the noise of outdoor units, we found that not only the loudness but also the nature of the noise also makes a difference in how noise is actually heard, and thus incorporated this concept in our development evaluation criteria.
We will continue to refer to customers' opinions as we continue to accumulate a history of Kirigamine air conditioners.
CS Activities by the Building Systems Group (in Japan)
The Building Systems Group handles elevators and escalators that provide vertical transportation within buildings and building management systems. By ensuring their safety and security and continuously delivering comfortable means of transportation and living spaces as indispensable social infrastructures on a global scale, we contribute to making society even more vibrant and sustainable.
Under the slogan "Quality in Motion", the Building Systems Group continues to pursue the highest level of quality in relation to safety, comfort, efficiency, safety, and the environment in its overall business activities (sales, development, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance), making use of our advanced technologies and environmental expertise. By this means, we are able to provide our customers with optimal solutions and a level of security and reliability that wins their complete satisfaction.
24-hour, 365-day Safety Hotline
Information centers of Mitsubishi Electric Building Solutions Corporation
Mitsubishi Electric Building Solutions Corporation, one of Mitsubishi Electric's group companies in Japan, specializes in the maintenance of elevators, escalators, and other such building facilities. This company's information centers provide a "safety hotline" for response in cases of trouble, such as failure signals and telephone calls from customers.
Mitsubishi Electric information centers situated in eight locations throughout the country constantly monitor remotely the status of contracted customers' building facilities. When an error signal is received, the system provides information on the current locations, works in progress, and even the technical levels of approximately 6,000 engineers, so that the most appropriate engineer closest to the customer's building can be located and dispatched to the site immediately.
Information center
The system also supports the quick recovery of building functions, by taking actions such as e-mailing information on the history of repairs and other matters related to the building to the engineer, or processing urgent orders for parts.
Moreover, by monitoring changes in data on the operational status of elevators and air-conditioning facilities, we can detect and address abnormalities before they develop into a malfunction and prevent problems from occurring.
Mitsubishi Elevator and Escalator Safety Campaign
Elevators and escalators are used to transport a large and indefinite number of persons, so a high level of safety is imperative, and they are thus required to be equipped with various safety devices and functions.
At the same time, to ensure safe operation, it is necessary to maintain the functioning of elevators and escalators through regular maintenance and inspection, and for people to use them correctly.
Based on this awareness, Mitsubishi Electric Building Solutions Corporation not only performs maintenance and inspection as appropriate, but has also been holding a safety campaign since 1980 to increase understanding of the proper usage of elevators and escalators among users and to promote their safe usage.
Mitsubishi Elevator and Escalator Safety Campaign
We also hold explanatory meetings for users, to teach children, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and other such users the proper and safe way to ride elevators and escalators, as well as explanatory meetings for apartment and building owners and managers, with a focus on daily management methods and emergency responses. These meetings have been attended by more than 300,000 people to date, and will continue to be held as an important safety activity of the Mitsubishi Electric Group.
Inazawa Building Systems Works SOLAÉ showroom (Mitsubishi Electric Building Solutions)
The showroom attached to the 173-meter-tall SOLAÉ elevator testing tower receives visitors from facility owners, design offices, and construction companies—as well as children from the local community—and having them see, feel, and experience actual Mitsubishi Electric products and technologies that are fundamental to building operation, the showroom communicates the safety and security of Mitsubishi Electric's products.
The elevator and escalator zone introduces visitors to the history of elevators and escalators, and, using actual elevator and escalator units, provides a survey of subjects ranging from their basic structure to the latest products and technologies that ensure their safety, security and comfort. Visitors can also experience the "function to connect with people" that improves operating efficiency and comfort as well as the "function to connect with the building" for integrating elevators with other building facilities. The building management system zone allows visitors to experience technologies including the latest building management and security systems.
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SOLAÉ elevator testing tower
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SOLAÉ showroom