Safety and Quality of Products and Services

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Utilization of Customer Feedback Gathered by the Customer Service Department
Responding to Customer Needs, Product Development, and Services in the Manufacturing Business
Initiatives in the Lifestyle Services Business for Increasing Customer Satisfaction

Utilization of Customer Feedback Gathered by the Customer Service Department

The Customer Service Department solicits heartwarming episodes at work, words of gratitude from customers, and lessons learned from customer feedback, including those from Group companies. Comments from the award winners, selected by employee voting, are published on the internal website. The valuable experiences of Sumitomo Forestry Group colleagues are utilized as inspiration in our efforts to improve customer satisfaction.

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Respect for and Application of Customer Feedback

Responding to Customer Needs, Product Development, and Services in the Manufacturing Business

Sumitomo Forestry Crest pursues quality throughout the entire space of a house to meet customer expectations, including those for visual aesthetics, simplicity of construction and comfort. Sumitomo Forestry Crest is devoted to developing "genuine" products that delight customers by harnessing its development capabilities, which only Sumitomo Forestry Crest can provide because of its in-depth understanding of the value of wood as a natural material.

Light, Low-Cost and Attractively-Designed Wooden Fire-Prevention Doors Made from Balsa

Sumitomo Forestry Crest Co., Ltd. sells its own branded wooden fire-prevention doors made from "balsa," which is known as the lightest timber in the world and is lighter, less-expensive and more attractively-designed than existing products. The doors are designed to be used as wooden fire-prevention doors in three- and four-story buildings in urban areas, and in the construction of mixed-use buildings, such as residential buildings with medical facilities. The doors are also environmentally friendly, with the raw material balsa being sourced from plantation forests where trees are grown from seedlings by Kutai Timber Indonesia (KTI), one of Sumitomo Forestry Group companies.

Initiatives in the Lifestyle Services Business for Increasing Customer Satisfaction

In the lifestyle services business, we are implementing a variety of initiatives to improve customer satisfaction.

In the elderly care business, we provide hospitality training to encourage employees to proactively serve users of our care facilities with more hospitality. For example, if they see a user looking around, they can ask, "How can I help you?" even if the person does not make any requests to them. We are working on this as one of the essential skills required of our staff.

In addition, in the elderly care business we conduct regular customer surveys. The results are regularly shared with our staff to help them resolve issues.

Promotion of DX

In the lifestyle services business, we are improving the quality of operations through digitization and labor savings.

Takinomiya Country Club, a golf course operated by Kawanokita Development, has installed navigation system on carts. By detecting where the cart is located on the course, the distance to the pin can be measured and visualized, improving customer satisfaction during playing unattended by staff.

Sumirin Enterprises, which is engaged in insurance and solutions businesses, is promoting operational efficiency by utilizing its own developed RPA. Due to the reduction of workload following the introduction of the RPA, its employees can now spend more time for customer service, leading to greater customer satisfaction.

Also, to increase the entire organization’s productivity and employee satisfaction, we are introducing an AI chatbot to which employees can ask questions about attendance management, personnel affairs, IT, internal systems and other issues specific to their company.
By providing employees with easy access to necessary in-house information, we are increasing the workplace operational efficiency and reducing burdens imposed on the departments in charge. We are thereby enhancing employees’ ability to solve problems and building a working environment that provides all employees with equal access to information.

In the elderly care business, we are actively working to promote DX on the frontline of nursing care services. By improving operational efficiency and raising productivity with the promotion of DX, we are increasing the amount of time that we can spend in contact with users, which leads to better service quality. Also, we aim to further improve the workplace environment by mitigating the physical and mental burden placed on employees and reducing their overtime hours.