Yamaha packs customer support knowledge for reuse
Yamaha Corporation of America's overall strategy to differentiate itself through customer support is exemplified by the use of knowledge management in its customer support center.
Yamaha Corporation of America, the biggest subsidiary of Japanese consumer products giant Yamaha, sells musical instruments, pro audio and computer-related products. It also considers ongoing improvement of customer support a strategic imperative, according to Roger Castleman, Yamaha's Knowledgebase Project Manager and Product Information Specialist.
"In today's marketplace, customer support is the sale maker, and that is proven on a daily basis in our Customer Support division," he said. Yamaha "cannot be stagnant in our business practices when it comes to how and what level of service we provide service to our customers."
Yamaha is implementing Serviceware's Knowledge-Pak software for its Online Support Center. Yamaha workers will be able to create and edit content items, transforming product information into product knowledge for customers and other workers to access and use.
By empowering customers to find their answers online, Yamaha will cut down on the number of inquiries sent to its support center, reducing wait times in the queue and creating happy customers. Also, Yamaha customer support staff can resolve issues more quickly with access to the knowledgebase, and have more time to populate it with quality answers.
The result is a domino effect, according to Castleman. "The more knowledge that is created, the more time becomes available for taking care of customers and self improvement."
Further, he said, staffers are less stressed out and therefore more productive, increasing employee retention and eliminating the need to hire more workers.
Castleman's team expects the system to receive 50,000 hits during the initial rollout, and expects that number to grow dramatically. "We anticipate that as word of our Internet-based support gets out, Yamaha customers around the world will take advantage of our knowledge base," he said