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Overarching policy for improving customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the most fundamental of principles underpinning Advantest’s business. Our product quality policy — “Offer the timely, high-quality products our customers expect, by designing for quality and by optimizing the production and engineering process globally” — characterizes our portfolio of products that offer not only superior performance, but also superior environmental friendliness and safety. We are committed to keeping our customers satisfied at every stage, from design and manufacturing to sales and service, via painstaking quality assurance and top-notch service and support on a global scale.
Sales and marketing practices that support customer satisfaction gains
Fiscal 2012 initiatives
Increasingly global semiconductor operations of entities ranging from design firms to final product manufacturers necessitate that test equipment manufacturers gain timely knowledge of individual customer needs and global industry trends, and subsequently apply such updated intelligence to making swift business decisions.
In fiscal 2012, we have been pursuing ventures under our new operating framework whereby, upon full integration of Verigy Ltd. into the Group in April, we generally operate a single Group company in each respective country. Meanwhile, we have been successively restructuring operations of business locations within and outside Japan. In addition to operations of Japan and Singapore, we finished integrating our US operations in September, China in October, Taiwan in November, and Korea in April 2013. Furthermore, under the new framework we have been increasing the pace of our efforts to combine sales and marketing activities.
Integrating business locations and operations in this way is enabling us to more effectively share intelligence and thereby better draw on our strengths in terms of an operating framework that allows us to leverage synergies brought about by such integration. Going forward, we are continuing our efforts to accelerate decision making processes, while creating products and solutions that truly satisfy our customers.
Customer satisfaction improvement activities in sales and marketing
In recent years, Japanese semiconductor manufacturers have been rapidly shifting from vertically-integrated strategies to fabless and fab-lite business models where they no longer have their own equipment. Accordingly, Advantest is venturing beyond the business of offering test solutions to pursue consulting activities whereby we extend to our customers know-how we have gained through an extensive install base in the outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) industry overseas, while serving them with our wealth of business experience with the OSAT business.
As part of these efforts, we launched the Supply Chain Management (SCM) Forum in fiscal 2012, where we host seminars showcasing SCM methods and introduce the latest trends in testing technology.
The 2nd SCM Forum held in June 2013 featured even livelier business-related discussion than in the previous year. Contributing to this success, each of the companies in the OSAT field prepared and set up individual workshops and other such sessions for participants, based on feedback received from participating companies prior to the event.
In fiscal 2013 and beyond, we intend to put together more sessions geared toward customer needs, and will continue engaging in activities designed to heighten customer satisfaction.
Promoting customer support
The Advantest Group has established its basic policy for customer support with the aim of globally-oriented restructuring the Group's service businesses .
Policies, targets, and plans for fiscal 2013
- We will propose total solutions in the form of support packages designed to deliver maximum efficiency to our customers in their device measurement operations.
- We will stand by our commitment to offer premium services and customer support, such that has been designed for efficiency as well as with the environment and safety in mind.
- We will extend our business globally, offering increasingly premium services and support always from the customer's perspective.
- We will offer our customers a high degree of added value and premium-quality professional services. We will strive to maintain our zero-accident record by thoroughly enforcing work safety in the realm of field services while establishing further work safety standards.
Better customer support with a global focus
The Advantest Group is forging a global support framework encompassing operations from development to mass production in line with customer business models.
We are taking steps to improve our global support framework through globally-oriented initiatives to reframe robust collaborative alliances with our customers, thereby enabling us to more swiftly and effectively resolve potential production equipment issues and minimize customer downtime. Awareness that one of our greatest challenges entails helping our customers maintain stable production equipment operations has prompted us to revamp our support framework and accordingly pursue improvements under the new framework, as described below.
Global Support Center system
Contact Center
Exchange Engineer from overseas
- We are building a global framework geared toward enabling us to better address requests and inquiries for support from our customers worldwide.
- We launched an engineer exchange program that enables our engineers to improve their professional abilities by gaining experience working with our overseas subsidiaries and customer support divisions. The two- to three-year program is designed to enable our engineers to improve engineering-specific foreign language proficiency, develop cross-cultural competencies, and sharp technical skills. Meanwhile, we have developed a global supply chain network covering customer operations ranging from their development bases to their mass production facilities. Moreover, we have also established related supply chain control mechanisms through which a centralized system analyzes details related to replacement equipment and parts at respective service centers to determine inventory needs at respective locations worldwide.
- We are delivering expert consulting services and solutions in regard to customer productivity improvements, in line with their demands. Also, we are offering device measurement training to our customers, and providing professional advice in that regard.
Recipient of 10 BEST customer satisfaction award for 25th consecutive year, on basis of VLSI Research survey
VLSI Research : 10 BEST
Advantest aims for a clear grasp of customer needs and strives to provide them with high performance, premium-quality total test solutions in a timely manner.
At Advantest, we gain a better understanding of our customers’ needs through information we acquire from our daily business activities, and also through yearly participation in the customer satisfaction survey conducted by VLSI Research, a company well-renowned for semiconductor market research. Based on this year's survey, we received the 10 BEST award granted to the top-ten ranking companies, for the 25th year in a row.
Moreover, our Sales and Marketing Division, System Engineer Division and Field Service Division jointly conduct an independent Advantest customer satisfaction survey once every two years. On the basis of such initiatives, we remain committed to delivering even better customer satisfaction going forward by listening to the voices of our many customers and providing them with solutions that best suit their needs.