Improving CS & Quality

We maintain a CS & Quality Subcommittee, which reports to the Company’s Sustainability Committee. Both the Sustainability Committee and CS & Quality Subcommittee meet twice a year to deliberate on matters relating to CS & Quality. In fiscal 2022, CS & Quality Subcommittee meetings were held twice, in October and March.

In order to enhance our efforts to collect and apply customers’ voices, since fiscal 2021 we have conducted training that enables those in charge of each business to acquire and apply methods of designing and analyzing questionnaires.
In fiscal 2022, we expanded the scope of training beyond those in charge of quality assurance in fiscal 2021 to include those in sales, development, and various other occupations in an effort to improve questionnaire design and analysis skills.

We strive to improve the customer service skills of each staff member of SEKISUI CHEMICAL Group Customer Consultation Office so that we can capitalize on the voices of customers as part of management. In fiscal 2022, we continued to work on improvements to business operations based on areas requiring revision that were pointed out to us within the results of the telephone communication skills test.

As part of efforts to improve customer satisfaction, the Customer Consultation Office has been offering telephone communication training, where the office’s staff members become instructors and train other departments.
In fiscal 2022, we provided online training, for example, to the three divisional companies. This online training combined prior study through video materials with role-playing based on practical conditions in a remote format. In addition, we continued to implement business e-mail e-learning training programs.

Intended to improve awareness of CS & Quality, CS & Quality Seminars consist of in-house lectures held by invited outside experts on a wide variety of themes, including customer satisfaction related cases, as well as organization building and human resources development for delivering customer satisfaction.
A total of 62 seminars have been held up to the end of fiscal 2021 since 2001.
In fiscal 2022, we held seminars on themes such as organizational transformation and leadership with a focus on those changes in organizations and individuals brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since welcoming our 55th anniversary in 2002, SEKISUI CHEMICAL Group has implemented STAR 55 activities as a program to promote CS throughout the Company. In order to ensure these activities maintain their momentum, in 2006 we began publishing the STAR 55 Bulletin, a newsletter compilation of excellent case studies for CS & Quality from SEKISUI CHEMICAL Group. We published the 47th issue at the end of fiscal 2021.
The STAR 55 Bulletin was issued twice in fiscal 2022, once in September and again in March, and covered CS & Quality activities from worksites around Japan.

SEKISUI CHEMICAL Group’s Customer Consultation Office receives around 7,000 to 10,000 inquiries and comments each year. We directly answer these inquiries and analyze the factors that motivated the customer to make the inquiry in the first place, in order to discover the hidden needs of customers.
VOICE is our yearly bulletin launched in fiscal 2015. This publication, which is published once a year, collects the comments received by the Customer Consultation Office with the intent of developing a corporate culture of CS & Quality among all employees and of promoting an understanding of the Group’s businesses beyond individual areas of responsibility.
In fiscal 2022, we published case study interviews showcasing products and services developed by each divisional company, based on their customer feedback. In order to ensure as many employees as possible can view these interviews, we published them on the intranet in consideration of those engaged in remote work.

SEKISUI CHEMICAL Group’s Housing Company conducts CS surveys of customers who have built Sekisui Heim homes. The feedback from customers is broadly shared throughout the Company and used in product development and in improvements in the quality of the Group’s services. Details of customer dissatisfaction are assessed in detail, and steps are taken to ensure a resolution to promote satisfaction. In fiscal 2022, customers who responded that they were very satisfied reached 83%.

The Company supports the Consumer Affairs Agency’s initiative of bringing about Consumer-oriented Management. Reflecting this support, we made a self-declaration for consumer-oriented management^*, expressing our philosophy and plans for initiatives, in January 2017.

Mindful that customer opinions are a valuable resource for management, our CS & Quality Management is based on the principle that customer feedback is the root of our monozukuri (manufacturing) activities and focused on aggressively pursuing innovations in the Quality of Our Employees, the Quality of Our Structures, and the Quality of Our Products. We aim to contribute to the realization of a worry-free and prosperous society by continuing to provide new value to our customers and society.
The following are five activities undertaken in fiscal 2022 based on our Self-declaration for Consumer-Oriented Management.