Honda Motor Co., Ltd. has bean a leader in motorcycles and four-wheeled vehicles in Japan and abroad for more than half a century, from the time it introduced its first motorcycle to the market. What has driven Honda to today's success can be captured by the word "dream." Its philosophy of providing customers with joy has led to many products that people have dreamed about, and is leading the company to further dreams.

Honda always foresees the future with its product development, as evidenced in its advanced engines that reflect environmental considerations. It also sticks to its basic philosophy of "Pursuing Customer Satisfaction," even on its website. An example of this can be seen in the comprehensive renewal of its "Customer Advice Center" page. The renewal enabled users to access much more information more quickly than any other source, and it incorporated an array of ideas to "entertain" visitors. As of January 2004, the page recorded 400,000 views in less than a year after its renewal. Mitsue-Links has assisted throughout the entire process, from renewal to operation of the Customer Advice Center page.

The 10th issue of Hot Communication features interviews with Mr. Shozo Watanabe (a technical chief from the Business Block) and Mr. Hiroyuki Fukasawa (chief of the Business Block) from Honda's Customer Advice Center:

Honda has always given priority to customer satisfaction. It established a Customer Advice Center, a telephone service to deal with inquiries and complaints. With the growing use of the Internet, the Center received growing demand for Web-based communication with customers.
"We already had basic sites such as an FAQ, but given the feedback we received from our customers, we were still not giving them enough timely information. It is undeniable that we neglected the use of the Internet in our customer services. Because of this, old information remained for a long time. Some of our members therefore began to suggest that we go back to the basics: namely customer satisfaction. (Mr. Fukasawa)

Thus, the Customer Advice Center began to reexamine itself. By setting as its key goals greater customer awareness of the website and speed of information updates, Honda aimed to create a website that provided its customers with information they needed more speedily than any other source.
"You may be able to upload a great deal of information to your website very quickly, but it does not make sense if the website does not have many visitors. To increase the number of visitors to our site, we gave priority to raising user awareness." (Mr. Watanabe)

To bolster awareness, Honda and Mitsue-Links worked on a strategy to increase the number of hits in the search engine. Both companies thoroughly discussed how to get more hits. After a commitment that ran for nearly a year, the page achieved a 300% increase in the number of viewers in comparison with the previous year.

The search engine strategy ran in parallel with our research on what kind of information customers needed. Based on the research, we decided to improve the "entertainment" aspect of our information such as "Kamen Rider's Favorite Car" and "Gransazers' Car." Mr. Fukasawa says, "We found that our customers had some questions that they would like to ask the call center but hesitated to do so. Questions concerning Kamen Rider's motorcycle were one example."

The page finally recorded 400,000 visitors in January 2004. With keyword searches such as "Kamen Rider," the hits have increased by a factor of more than one thousand. "We have gained an extraordinary number of hits for a Customer Advice Center, surely a first for any industry site. We could not conceal our surprise." (Mr. Fukasawa)

Providing information rapidly is a specialty of Mitsue-Links. Throughout the period of the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda's website was the quickest to announce the number of the previous day's visitors every morning. Announcing peak times for visitors the previous day helped future visitors work out which hours and days of the week the show might be relatively less crowded. The people who ran the show said the website had been very helpful in improving their services.

"A lot of media representatives had already reported on the types of cars that were being exhibited. So we thought the visitors would want information such as the number of visitors. Also, the Customer Advice Center has reexamined how to send information from the customer's perspective." (Mr. Fukasawa) As a result, access to the page has increased on weekends, although in the past accesses were mostly concentrated on weekdays. This shows that Honda's website is becoming "Dad's home entertainment."

When it comes to an overwhelming amount of information, no other website comes close to the 300 pages the Honda's Customer Advice Center offers. Production work on these pages continued day and night, on workdays and holidays. Mr. Fukasawa recalls, "Sometimes I called Mr. S, Mitsue-Links' director in charge, on weekends. But he never failed to call me back. I said, 'You can call me back at the start of next week.' The person that took the phone must have always managed to contact Mr. S, because he would call me back very soon. This episode represents their careful service, and I was very impressed."

"We had a lot to learn about a website, but the automobile industry uses a unique terminology of its own, and I noticed that Mr. S and Mr. I, the person in charge of sales, apparently studied the car industry very hard. It came to the point where they were correcting our mistakes in giving instructions. Our work began to progress much more smoothly." (Mr. Watanabe)

Ultimately aiming to create a site with the capability to answer any question, Honda is eager to add more content to its Customer Advice Center page. "Actually I'm also engaged in call center jobs and I put out questionnaires among the staff to find out what kinds of website-related requests they receive from customers. I also conduct similar questionnaires with our customers. I hope our website will continue to improve its ability to satisfy any requests and demands." (Mr. Fukasawa)

"Mitsue-Links has given us advice appropriately pitched to our limited knowledge of websites. We will share our responsibilities and move to a higher level. At the same time we need to solidify our operational foundation. Even if the person in charge were to change, the quality of the website should never be adversely affected. We would like the Mitsue-Links staff to continue to help us so our website can become completely independent." (Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Fukasawa)

Afterthoughts

Pursuing customer satisfaction means repeated reflection and reworking. Previously, Honda pointed out some problems with our staff's telephone manner. Our entire company discussed the problems and improved them to the point where we now receive praise from other clients for what used to be a weakness. Similarly, Honda has checked its website very carefully and worked with us to improve it. Everything comes from attaching importance to the customer's perspective. This is the only attitude that can lead to true service. Anything that emerges from this attitude has the power to strongly impress people. We learned this in our interviews with the two gentlemen from Honda.

Hot Communication Interviewers
Yuki Mochizuki
Isao Naruse