Wacom is known as one of the leading companies in the industry of pen tablets for creative users with its products used in a wide range of business scenes, such as its pen tablets for professionals of comic artists and illustrators, electronic signature systems for procedures on financial contracts and front desks at hotel check-in, and digitization support for application forms in municipalities.

Wacom has been exploring the method of its support center in regards to the diversity of inquiries from various customers about different contents due to the broad range of its products' purpose, scene, and usage of their use. “Because the difference of customers' requests between Japan and other areas either the former asking for thoroughgoing support with sympathetic manner, or just quick resolutions in the latter, customer handling in Japan under global knowledges did not meet their uniquely Japanese needs,” Mr. Ara said.

Following such issues, Wacom decided to reconstruct its support center independently only in Japan, starting with BELLSYSTEM24 as its outsourcing contractor starting November 2018. Mr. Ara explained about that decision, “We definitely entrusted BELLSYSTEM24 as a partner which was in its expertise to carry out operations in light of the contents of offer from it and its extensive experience and performance in various fields such as building and operation global support centers, recruiting agents with quality management programs of training and education, and among other operational processes.”

BELLSYSTEM24 focused on the following points to build and operate the “support center that has empathy for customers” which is Wacom's aim.

The first plan is for training and education for agents who communicate with customers by conducting one-month training to acquire knowledge of Wacom products through hands-on experiences so that they can deal from the same perspective as customers. Mr. Ara appraised such an initiative by saying "Thankfully, we got agents to acquire knowledge of all of our products, which includes not just being used by general customers but also by several corporations, such as hospitals, schools, shopping malls, and hotels, during the training period.” In addition, agents have made to learn about troubleshootings and other serveral past cases, and to review whether they have firmly kept gaining those knowledges through routine examinations after the training.

Certainly, additional trainings are also organized from time to time when new products are added, through hands-on experience as a matter of course, to meet their perspectives closely with customers. Also, a Verification Booth has been installed in the support center, where agents can simulate the situations same as customers' inquiries to carry out guidance carefully with more detailed and plain explanations.

Focusing on speedy and seamless alignment and information sharing among an elected few is the second plan between three channels of customer inquiries through phone, chat, and email. For instance, sharing interactions with customers through CRM to make seamless takeover possible for other agents on phone handling, or dedicated support by an initial agent through an entire round on each email handling, to avoid customers having repetitive effort to explain after the second time contacts with their burden reduction.

This plan also focuses on sharing knowledge of customer feedback sent to our center, information about the latest products, new features added to the existing products with constant information updates and timely sharing within the team to mutually enhance our quality of response.

The third plan is to pay careful attention to the trends of public opinions by watching the postings on social media about how Wacom users take advantage of its products for creating what type of works with what kind of feeling they have, in order to reflect and utilize the handling of support in the center.Also, the printed out likes and comments for Wacom on SNS by putting them up in the center works to increase agents' motivations.

Likewise, other in-house attempts are devised to understand customer experiences and feels through activities such as holding agent design competition using Wacom products to paint and show off with everyone in the center.

The illustration from customer moved all agents from BELLSYSTEM24 who saw it, and boosted their motivations.

Furthermore, Wacom keeps improving its products based on the customer voices gathered at the support center for greater promotion of its customer service based on the belief of 'life-long ink.' Mr. Ara continued, “We are always keeping in mind to reflect opinions and requests from customers received at contact center of our product improvements, based on the belief that any innovation evolves from customer voices. Wacom Cintiq Pro 16 is the best example among others of which we realized its functional improvements based on the thorough review of past customer voices about its connection to PC, colors on LCD screen, and wrighting comfortability partly with selecting its project leader from agents in customer support division,thereby we are confident that this improvement satisfied both existing and new users.”

Wacom Support Center is promoting the concept of Lifelong Ink as they improve customer satisfaction and reflect their feedback to improve their products. Mr. Ara said, “The support center is the most important link to our customers. It is important that we listen to our customers and leverage their feedback in this rapidly changing era. BELLSYSTEM24 has been continuously working on building the environment of the contact center and caring for the communicators. While we sometimes discuss serious subjects such as KPI, they are our trusted partner as they strive to make our customers happy.”

Mr. Ara concluded by mentioning their future outlooks as follows: “In the midst of the diversification of touchpoints such as phone, chat, and email, we comprehend that the way of how to deal with customers would be one of the issues that require further consideration. While seeking a wider range of contact methods everywhere, if possible, we would like to continue working together with offers and initiatives provided by BELLSYSTEM24 in the future to build a reliable way of contacting customers to reach the target recipients by meeting various constraints in its situations and channels.”