Adobe offers a very wide variety of products, with more than 20 products in the creative category alone. In addition, a number of new products have been added over the past few years, and even if a new creative advisor undergoes one month of training, he/she will not be able to acquire enough knowledge and skills to cover them all. What can we do to provide a better customer experience (CX) and increase customer satisfaction? We digitized the Q&A sessions from creative advisors to managers to accumulate and leverage knowledge to improve operational efficiency, and implemented various engagement improvement measures with the cooperation of Adobe.

To ensure that all creative advisors have access to Adobe products, we grant free licenses for our flagship product, Adobe Creative Cloud, so they can use a variety of creative software such as for photo processing with Photoshop, drawing with Illustrator, web production, and video editing. By holding contests for creative works created using these products and subsidizing the acquisition of Adobe certification, we have created a system that allows many creative advisors to naturally deepen their understanding of the products. In an illustration contest held by Adobe for creative advisors from all over the world, a creative advisor from BELLSYSTEM24 also won the Grand Prix, and the work was highly acclaimed within Adobe.

In accordance with Adobe’s global standards, BELLSYSTEM24 has organized a team of specialists, each specialized in shift management, training, quality evaluation, recruitment, and so on, to develop and manage creative advisors. Engagement measures have improved the retention rate, and building up skills under a training and management system that meets global standards has raised the service quality throughout the center, achieving a customer satisfaction rate of 85% and a retention rate of over 40%, the best among centers worldwide.

“In the first quarter of 2022 in particular, BELLSYSTEM24 customer satisfaction survey results reached record levels in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the fact that we have achieved a retention rate of 40% has had an impact on the awareness of numerical values around the world. It is probably because the industry norm for a retention rate was about 10 to 20%, but the figure of 40% achieved by the Japanese contact center has created the realization that ‘if you work hard, you can do even better.’ I think it is fair to say that they have contributed to improving retention rates not only in Japan but also globally,” said Mr. Tsuji.

To reflect customer requests in its products, Adobe is implementing a global project called the “Voice of Agent Program” to gather customer feedback to its headquarters. “BELLSYSTEM24’s creative advisors are the ones who collect the most feedback in the world. Many of the pieces of feedback collected here have already been reflected in our products,” said Mr. Tsuji. BELLSYSTEM24’s creative advisors also contribute to the evolution of Adobe products.

Why is BELLSYSTEM24 able to outperform the globally selected vendors and continue to be selected as a partner, even though we are the only local vendor among Adobe’s global contact center outsourcing partners? Mr. Tsuji offers as analysis: “The reason is that you have many excellent creative advisors and a high degree of flexibility.” Regarding the first point, the quality of creative advisors, many of our creative advisors are high performers who consistently maintain a high customer satisfaction level of 90 to 95% and respond to inquiries in a short time, which is one of the results of engagement measures and training given by a global team of specialists. “In this age of instant answers to questions on the Web, telephone inquiries require ‘effortlessness,’ meaning that the customer must be able to get the answer without wasting time. I feel that BELLSYSTEM24 is unique in that it has many high performers who can do this,” said Mr. Tsuji.

The second point, flexibility, is the ability to respond to change. The reason why they switched to subscription services was basically that they wanted customers to try new products more and more, he said. “In today’s rapidly changing business environment, contact centers must also constantly change. In this respect, BELLSYSTEM24 has the flexibility to consider 'what can be done' and 'how can it be done,' rather than being bound by conventional operations. It is reassuring to see that they are willing to work together to make the business thrive,” said Mr. Tsuji. BELLSYSTEM24 will also continue to promote further improvements in order to support Adobe’s customer journey and develop its business.