Ricoh 1998 Annual Report Download - page 9

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W HAT W E ’ RE A LL A BOUT
Customer satisfaction is far more than a slogan at Ricoh. It punctuates everything we
think and do. It powers Image Communication, our corporate slogan. Through it, we
aim to maximize user productivity and creativity by efficiently integrating image infor-
mation with data and making it far easier to manage. And it is the ultimate determi-
nant of Ricoh’s industry position and its long-term viability.
Image Communication has five core components (listed inside the front cover).
They all champion the cause of customer satisfaction, which is what we’re all about.
C
REATING A U SER -F RIENDLY E XPERIENCE
The devil is in the details. This is where we’ve taken the many small steps that consti-
tute a giant leap for user-friendliness.
Use any of our Image Communication products and you’ll see what we mean. Ev-
erything in our machines targets and delivers the prize of productivity through appli-
ance ease. Features mean nothing by themselves. Performance is everything. We
empower users to complete daunting tasks with appliance ease—something not one
personal computer hardware manufacturer or software developer can truly say. Fiddly
gadgets should have no place in today’s offices.
That is why our products are ergonomically designed and externally simple. They
are your first clue that we shield users from incredible complexity.
User-friendly operating panels embody similar thinking. They offer clear, useful
guidance. They protect you from waste and frustration. Where appropriate, they offer
interesting alternatives. And you can customize more and more models through job
programming functions that eliminate repetition for regular tasks.
You can also take advantage of multifunctionality from
our mostly digital products and systems. These include
copying, faxing, printing, and networking modules. And reli-
ability is better with multifunctional models because there
are fewer moving parts and less wear and tear on compo-
nents like scanners. A crucial and related benefit is quiet op-
eration. And what with the expense of renting and
maintaining offices these days, compactness and lower elec-
tricity bills are the name of the game.
We must be doing something right. According to indus-
try surveys, in 1997 we had the top market share in our mainline digital black-and-
white plain-paper copiers in Japan, the United States, and Europe.
M AKING THE C USTOMER N O . 1
Satisfaction Fact: In August 1997, J. D. Power Asia
Pacific ranked our copiers and fax machines No. 1 in Japan
for customer satisfaction. Our printers placed second in a
January 1998 survey.
“I love my job at the Technology Solu-
tions Center because we help satisfy
Ricoh customers. We help by quickly
providing real-time solutions over
the telephone. We can identify poten-
tial problem trends by collecting and
entering statistics on every call into
our Hotline database.”
—Carmine Baratta, Product Specialist,
Technology Solutions Center, Ricoh Corpo-
ration, West Caldwell, New
Jersey, U.S.A.
T h e T e c h n i c a l S u p p o r t H o t l i n e
The Technical Support Hotline is part of Ricoh
Corporation’s Technology Solutions Center,
which was developed to provide world-class
customer support with state-of-the-art technol-
ogy. Each call is logged into a database for prob-
lem trending, resolution collection, and issue
escalation to optimize product performance.
Ricoh Silicon Valley, Inc., devel-
oped an Internet-based document
retrieval system that we commer-
cialized in Japan in April 1998.
This system lets you use a brows-
er on any Internet-linked PC to
access and download digitized
copies, faxes, and other materials
from a Ricoh-maintained server.