Jedi Archive

Customer Satisfaction



Sony is wholeheartedly committed to improving product and service quality from the customer's viewpoint. Sony's goal is to gain its customers' total trust, confidence and satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction (CS) Philosophy



A key aspect of Sony's corporate mission is to be a trusted partner to its customers. Sony will achieve this by viewing products and services from the customer's perspective and by continuously improving the quality of its CS activities. Sony wants its customers to have high expectations, and is dedicated to fulfilling them.
Based on this commitment, in April 2001 Sony promulgated the Sony CS Charter to firmly instill the importance of CS consciousness throughout the organization. Sony also launched a CS21 Campaign in February 2002 to ensure that all employees are aware of the charter and put it into practice. This campaign is still continuing on an electronics group-wide basis.

CS21 Campaign Activities



The CS21 Campaign slogan is "Customer Satisfaction is Sony's Corporate Culture." To ensure CS is truly a part of Sony's corporate culture, Sony is engaged in a variety of activities to achieve product quality and service that guarantee its customers' satisfaction.
In general, the CS21 Campaign urges every Sony employee, at all levels and in all areas, to review their activities from the customer's perspective and to implement concrete measures to further improve the quality of CS. Sony encourages employees to listen to the views of a wide range of customers, and use what they learn to review the usefulness of Sony's products and improve their quality.
Sony continues to take further steps to improve CS. During fiscal 2004, Sony designated digital audio products, personal computers and strategically important new products such as flat panel televisions and DVD recorders as priority product groups and initiated projects designed to upgrade their quality control.

Customer Information Centers



Sony established its first Customer Information Center in Japan in 1963 to provide customers with timely and appropriate responses to their inquiries. This function is now available worldwide.
In fiscal 2004, the number of inquiries received totaled around 6.6 million in Japan and 22 million worldwide. Most were related to the specifications or use of Sony products, and were made prior to or shortly after purchase. Recently, however, there have been an increasing number of inquiries concerning the connectivity of Sony products to those of other manufacturers, reflecting the needs of the digital, broadband era.
In addition, as more and more people are making use of the Internet, Sony has increased its Web-based solutions aimed at providing product, service and support information in a timely manner. Sony is making more product information available and has expanded the FAQ section of the website.
To further improve the quality of service, in fiscal 2003 Sony's Customer Information Centers in Japan sought and obtained COPC-2000* certification, an international standard for call centers. Sony's center in Hong Kong also received certification in 2004.
Sony is fully committed to improving the service it provides its customers everyday. To this end, Sony will continue to promote the highest levels of customer-centered service throughout the world by striving to meet the objective standards of international certification organizations.


* COPC-2000 is a management standard specifically for call centers and fulfillment (delivery) work based on the American National Management Quality Award.

Repair and Service Network



Various measures are being implemented to improve the quality of Sony's after-sales service.
In 2001, Sony introduced a service training program based on e-learning, targeted at employees who work in the field and staff of authorized distributors, and expanded the number of users worldwide to share knowledge and accelerate improvements.
In fiscal 2004, there were 37,000 users assisting Sony's drive to deliver uniformly excellent services for digital, high-performance products.
Also during the year, Sony made it possible for customers to download operating manuals from websites overseas.
Improvement of repair services is essential to increasing customer satisfaction. In light of this, Sony seeks to improve the quality of its technical information and accelerate its distribution among Sony Group companies.
Currently there are more than 8,300 service locations worldwide, including its own service stations and those of authorized repair agents. At its sites in each region, Sony has instituted programs aimed at making continuous improvements in the quality of repair services. These programs include training courses to improve repair skills and the sharing of information on the latest Sony products. Every effort is made to ensure a uniformly high standard of service at all of Sony's worldwide service locations.
In fiscal 2004, Sony set specific targets for the improvement of repair services and monitored progress toward achieving these targets for increasing customer satisfaction with these repair services. Furthermore, Sony has compared and analyzed its performance with that of other companies to clarify its relative strengths and weaknesses.
Sony has also introduced projects to improve repair services in all regions of the world, mainly by shortening distribution times, reviewing repair fees, improving the response at repair centers and revising repair processes. The effects of these efforts have begun to appear, and Sony will continue to expand and accelerate these activities to increase customer satisfaction.




Service station at Sony Corporation headquarters in Tokyo




Product and Service Safety



Customer safety is a matter of the greatest importance to Sony when sending a product out to the world. Sony is fully committed to identifying and dealing with safety issues for each and every product that it supplies.
Sony not only ensures compliance with applicable international and national product safety standards but also takes extensive measures to avoid potential harm to customers. In this regard, Sony has developed the Safety Standard Compliance Program to maintain its own internal safety standards, ranging from product development through design and all production stages.
In addition, Sony has a department charged with examining the possibility of latent medical risks posed to customers. The department undertakes research to ensure that using Sony products and services does not have adverse effects on the human body. The research results are shared with relevant departments as deemed necessary and applied to ensure appropriate management decisions are made.
Sony takes comprehensive measures to ensure the safety of products after they have been repaired or serviced, by strictly setting and implementing the specifications of replacement parts.

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Organization for the Verification of Product Compatibility and Connectivity



The augmentation of digital consumer electronics has enabled the transmission of data between various devices that can be linked together. As a result, Sony has been receiving many more inquiries about product compatibility and connectivity. Recognizing the need to reliably verify compatibility and connectivity in the design of new products, Sony established an organization specifically for this purpose in February 2004. Its task is to carry out the verification of compliance with standards and regulations, and also to ascertain the actual connectivity capabilities of products. The results of connectivity verification are stored in a database so they can be utilized to create better products and to permit rapid responses to inquiries.




Web page offering information on product connectivity (Japanese)






Making Products Easier to Use



As audiovisual products have become multifunctional in recent years, some operating manuals exceed 300 pages. As a result, customers may find the manuals a burden. Sony aims to make products and manuals more user-friendly.
For Sony's KDL-L40HVX LCD television, which was released in 2004, Sony reviewed the 320-page manual of the previous model from the customer's standpoint. Various departments responsible for the product collaborated to revamp the manual, giving it a user-friendly table of contents and consolidating some information.
Sony also made the manual easier to handle by separating it into two booklets, the Connection and Installation Manual and the Operating and Troubleshooting Manual, and by halving the total number of pages.
Sony will continue to improve its manuals by drawing on customer feedback on its new approach.


By cutting down on the number of pages, the manual is now divided into two easy-to-use saddle-stitch booklets. The illustration of the remote control is on the center spread page, making it easier to understand how to operate it.






Increasing the Accessibility of Information to Customers



Since 1992, Sony Marketing (Japan) Inc. has produced product catalogs on CD to provide customers, including the visually impaired, with easy access to product information. These CD catalogs are designed to allow quick access to information through a special track-numbering system and to facilitate product use.




Product catalogs on CD provide audio product information




Age-Based Rating Systems for Game Software



Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) aims to make games as popular as music, movies and broadcasting. The range of PlayStation users has now expanded to include everyone from children to seniors, and game software also encompasses a broad range of genres for children and adults.
Game industry organizations have introduced rating systems for customers in Japan, the United States and Europe (CERO, ESRB and PEGI, respectively), based on games' target age group. The U.S. system has operated for 10 years and won top marks from the public for not only indicating age categories but also for being the first to add the content descriptors that detail the game contents.
In Japan, with the cooperation of the retailers, measures are being considered to make the rating system effective, such as the voluntary refusal to sell rated software to under-aged customers.
SCEI plays an important role in promoting rating systems in Japan, the United States and Europe

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