Ricoh 2014 Annual Report Download - page 57

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Overview Action Data & Prole
Customer Satisfaction
Ricoh Group Sustainability Report 2014 56
We believe that anticipating the future, going one step
beyond to provide new value exceeding customers’
expectations, is what enables the Ricoh Group to
grow. With this in mind, we develop activities that
involve our customers and thereby fuel the creation of
new value.
One such activity is the technical advisory meet-
ing, an event that involves the participation of Ricoh
Group customers. Invitations are extended to people in
charge of IT infrastructure at customer companies. The
group discussion format among peers facilitates the
exchange of information constructive for enhancing
administrative procedures and also highlights topics of
common concern. Themes include network congura-
tion, security, cloud use, new workstyles, and visual
communications. Our goal is to utilize group discus-
sions to reveal latent customer needs and apply opin-
ions from a customer perspective to the development
of new products. In addition, these meetings provide
an ideal venue to demonstrate next-generation Ricoh
equipment being considered for a market debut and to
collect opinions and requests. This valuable customer
feedback is forwarded to prod-
uct planning and development
departments and reflected in
new technology developments
and better products.
Examples of functions that
have been turned into products,
thanks to customer input, include
the addition of optical character
recognition (OCR) for electronic
documents to a multifunction
printer, as well as an app to print
data stored on smart devices
from a multifunction printer.
Another approach is indi-
vidual interviews with represen-
tatives at customer companies
Technical advisory meeting helps in visualizing customer needs
Case study: Creating new customer value through our initiative
The Ricoh Group aims to understand our customers, meet their requests, devise solutions, and ultimately
delight those who use our products and services.
at the management level. Through this activity, which
targets corporations that have chosen the Ricoh Group
as a business partner, we inquire about changes at
customer companies, such as new business directions
and IT and global strategies. We ask where we stand
in terms of customer satisfaction and what we can do
going forward to meet customers’ evolving needs. We
expect customers to be frank and honest about what
they want from us. Using the results of these inter-
views, we consider responses that we, as a partner to
our customers, can apply to support their respective
business directions and management issues. We
analyze potential responses and strive to create new
value that fuels growth to both sides of the sales
equation—for customers and for ourselves. The
results are then utilized in medium- and long-term
product development and sales strategies for the
Ricoh Group.
These two approaches—the technical advisory
meetings and individual interviews—are vital, helping
to build stronger bonds between us and our customers
and facilitating growth on both sides.
TechnicaladvisorymeetingatRicohEuropePLC