Quality and Customer Service
Basic Approach
Customers and other stakeholders place high importance on the protection of consumer rights. Ensuring product safety, security, and accessibility are vital in this respect. True to its philosophy and policy regarding product quality and customer service, Sony is wholeheartedly committed to continuously improving product and service quality from its customers’ viewpoints in order to maintain and enhance satisfaction, confidence, and trust. In particular, Sony is working to ensure product safety and security while also improving customer experiences, in the conviction that its most important goal is to remain a highly trusted partner to all customers.
Based on this approach, Sony remains committed to a fundamental policy of ensuring product safety, security, and accessibility, and takes its customers’ viewpoints into consideration in order to deliver product quality and customer service that exceed expectations. It will continue leveraging its worldwide network to collect and analyze information, which can then be reflected in new releases of products and customer services.
Philosophy and Policy
Since the start of its operations, Sony has been firmly committed across all of its businesses to providing customer-oriented, high-quality products and services. This philosophy is also set forth in the Founding Prospectus drafted in 1946 by Sony’s co-founder, Masaru Ibuka.
As set out in the Sony Group Code of Conduct, Sony delivers life-enhancing products, services and entertainment. The Code of Conduct also states that Sony meets or exceeds legally mandated standards for quality, safety, security and accessibility, and sets out Sony’s commitment to providing customers with information that is accurate, and easy to read and understand.
Sony has established the Sony Pledge of Quality, which lays out its basic policy on product and customer service quality. This is aimed at reinforcing awareness of Sony’s commitment to ensuring that the quality of its products and customer services exceeds the expectations of its customers around the world.
Product Quality and Quality Management
The Sony Pledge of Quality declares that “Sony employees will always respect our customers’ viewpoints in striving to deliver product quality and customer service that exceed their expectations.” To this end, Sony makes continuous, decisive efforts to enhance product quality and to reinforce its quality management system.
Sony’s Quality Management System Framework
Sony has configured its quality management system by defining quality management mechanisms across all processes, from product planning, development, design and manufacturing to sales and customer service. This has included defining the roles, responsibilities and authority of those responsible for product and customer service quality and establishing guidelines.
Based on this quality management system, Sony is implementing measures on an ongoing basis to improve the quality of its products and services.
Sony’s Quality Management System Framework
The Role of the Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management
The Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management is appointed with the task of coordinating efforts to improve product and customer service quality and ensuring timely responses to problems.
Rules worldwide have been strengthened to ensure prompt reporting to the Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management when Sony receives information about an incident involving a Sony product that affects or may affect customer safety, and information about security issues relating to products and network services or the potential for such occurrences. Based on the reports received, the Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management provides the necessary follow-up and instructs the relevant divisions to investigate the incidents and respond appropriately to the customer.
The Role of Quality Officers and CS Officers
Sony has appointed Quality officers within each business unit and tasked them with promoting activities to improve product quality and spearheading initiatives to enhance the quality of products and services in specific business areas under the direction and supervision of the Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management and the head of the relevant business unit. Regular Quality officer meetings are also held to evaluate the progress of quality-oriented business plans, promote initiatives aimed at achieving targets, and debate specific activities and responses to quality-related issues and common challenges. Sony has also appointed CS officers responsible for improving the quality of customer service in markets around the world where Sony products are sold and has tasked them with spearheading a network of global-level initiatives under the supervision of the Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management and the heads of sales function companies. Meetings of business unit Quality officers and regional CS officers are held to evaluate the progress of quality and customer service business plans, promote initiatives aimed at achieving targets, and share information on customer service and product quality activities and common challenges, thereby contributing to global efforts to improve product quality and customer service.
In addition, Sony has also created frameworks specific to each business unit and region in order to ensure its products comply with pertinent laws and regulations.
Quality Management
With the aim of fulfilling the Sony Pledge of Quality, Sony has formulated mid-term and fiscal year targets for product quality and customer service initiatives and has also established key quality-related indicators for business plans. Business units and sales function companies subsequently devise their own quality and customer service targets and business plans for the fiscal year, in line with which they continue to promote quality improvement initiatives. Sony holds meetings of top managers of the electronics business to deliberate and decide on key strategies related to product quality and customer service.
It also formulates and administers quality standards applicable to Sony’s electronics products and services, focusing on criteria such as product safety and performance, labeling, customer service, usability and accessibility. These standards are updated continuously to reflect technological advances, changes in applicable legal and regulatory requirements, and social changes, with the aim of ensuring Sony’s ability to deliver quality and services that exceed the expectations of customers.
Sony has also obtained certification under ISO 9001 for all sites manufacturing electronics products.
Responding to the Customer
Sony makes active use of customer feedback to improve its products and customer service. Sony customer information centers promptly and accurately collate customer opinions, reports of malfunctions after purchase, questions regarding use, and other feedback. This feedback is aggregated into a database for the planning, design and product quality groups to work together to improve product quality and strengthen product performance, reporting progress to top management on an as-needed basis. Sony is also committed to ensuring responding to security vulnerabilities in a timely manner. To this end, it has established Secure@Sony, a public hotline for customers and security researchers to submit vulnerabilities found in Sony products and network services.
The communication tools used by customers are becoming more diverse. In order to meet these broader customer expectations, Sony also analyzes customer feedback on social media.
Utilizing Customer Feedback
Quality Hotline
Detecting product quality-related problems at the earliest stage possible is vital. To that end, Sony has established a Quality Hotline to gather product quality-related information, including reports of problems, as well as opinions from Sony Group employees. Employees can also share findings identified during customer use of products and any problems with the quality of product-related customer service as perceived by customers who have made use of those services.
In addition, reporting rules have been established to ensure prompt, appropriate action in the event that Group employees become aware of an incident involving a Sony product that affects or may affect customer safety and information about security issues relating to products and network services or the potential for such occurrences. These rules specify applicable reporting channels and time frames, providing a system for consistent reporting without delay. Dedicated internal hotlines have been established for specialized teams, enabling them to resolve issues rapidly.
Upon investigating a problem to ascertain the veracity of the information received, the Quality Hotline office proposes and introduces measures to prevent previous problems from recurring and potential new problems from emerging.
Market Quality Improvements
Sony has established dedicated quality management organizations in each of its business areas that are responsible for improving the quality of pertinent products in each market. At Sony headquarters, information related to quality issues arising in the marketplace is gathered in a timely manner from a broad range of sources in Japan and overseas, and is reported weekly to headquarters’ quality management and technical specialists. In addition to ensuring that such issues are thoroughly addressed, Sony is strengthening its quality improvement performance by promoting measures to prevent recurrence and proactive measures in relation to quality issues.
Responses to Quality Issues
Sony recognizes that ensuring its customers’ satisfaction, confidence and trust is one of its most important management tasks, and strives to prevent quality-related problems through the systems and efforts described earlier in this document.
Sony responds swiftly in the event of a quality-related issue, with the relevant departments working together to investigate facts and take appropriate action on a global scale. When such an issue arises, Sony decides upon the need for public announcements and market action for customers, and implements any needed steps after undertaking various studies of the issue, following a process common to all Sony products.
This process starts with the gathering of information from customer service centers worldwide and collaboration with concerned local parties to ensure an accurate grasp of the issue. Based on information collected, Sony then works to determine the correct response by identifying the cause of the issue, implementing countermeasures and promptly verifying the effectiveness thereof, and reviewing the issue from the customer’s perspective. Sony also cooperates with CS officers at sites in each region to ensure the same level of service is provided to customers the world over.
With regard to methods and media for issuing public announcements of product quality-related issues, Sony examines the effectiveness of the various means at its disposal, including websites, e-mail, notification via apps, or other media.
Product Quality, Safety and Long-Term Reliability
Improving the Quality of Products
Sony strives to maximize product quality by improving design, manufacturing, and parts.
Design Quality
In the initial stages of the design process, the individual in charge of a particular business unit verifies new technologies and new parts and, from the user’s perspective, determines how a product is to be used. At the conclusion of the design process, the individual in charge confirms the degree to which the intended levels of product quality and reliability have been realized. In addition, in order to give customers who place their trust in the Sony brand the smoothest possible experience, Sony requires relevant departments, including original equipment manufacturer (OEM)* and original design manufacturer (ODM)* companies, to comply with group-wide quality standards. Compliance with these standards is also tested at the end of the design process. Such approaches prevent the occurrence of problems caused by products, while also ensuring that product designs incorporate consideration of user convenience.
- *OEM refers to manufacturers contracted to perform manufacturing, ODM refers to manufacturers contracted to perform design and manufacturing.
Production Quality
In the effort to ensure that Sony does not receive, manufacture or ship anything with quality-related problems, Sony adheres to a policy of workmanship at all of its manufacturing sites that ensures customers can use Sony products with confidence. Initiatives include setting important quality targets at each manufacturing site and implementing PDCA processes to facilitate the achievement of such targets and the continuous improvement of production quality. Sony has also established standard production quality rules to ensure Sony products manufactured by OEM/ODM companies are of the same high quality as those manufactured at Sony production sites.
Component Quality
Recognizing the importance of parts and determined to manufacture products built for long-term use, Sony carefully selects key parts independently for each of its major product categories and is pursuing focused efforts aimed at increasing the reliability of the parts it uses through cooperation among relevant departments and the development of new reliability evaluation technology.
Improving Product Safety
Providing reliable products that customers can use safely is a top priority for Sony. Accordingly, at every stage of its business activities, including product planning, development, design, manufacturing, marketing, and after-sales service for all products and services, Sony takes steps to comply with safety standards based on laws and regulations while constantly striving to surpass those standards in order to maintain the safety of its products. As part of these efforts, Sony has established a specialist cross-departmental team in charge of product safety assessment. When developing products employing new technologies and using new technologies at events, Sony also seeks to ensure that products do not affect customer health by carrying out scientific assessments and applying the results of such assessments to its work.
Improving the Long-Term Reliability of Products
Sony has established a Quality Reliability Lab supporting Sony’s commitment to deliver safe, durable and reliable products to customers.
The Quality Reliability Lab has assigned specialists to work full time on improving technologies essential to product reliability and continues working to ensure the long-term reliability of products by developing elemental technologies for preventing age-related deterioration and corrosion of materials and parts, as well as technologies necessary to ensure the reliability of new technologies and functions required for new products and to analyze and evaluate such technologies and functions. These technologies and the information obtained through these activities are utilized to improve design and parts selection processes and increase reliability of products. Sony also presents some of its own knowledge of evaluation technologies at academic meetings and industry conferences and gatherings, seeking to go beyond its own walls and contribute to the industry.
Product Security
Sony positions the security of products and network services provided to customers as one of its important quality requirements. To enable use of Sony products and services with peace of mind and without compromising on the customer experience, Sony adopts a consistent approach throughout its work, applying security design and evaluation from the planning and development stages, continuing to collect and analyze information regarding vulnerabilities after release, and taking prompt action where necessary.
Furthermore, while continuing to enhance its internal structures and operational processes connected to product security, Sony is working to ensure appropriate compliance with the advancement of new laws and regulations governing product security in different countries and regions, to provide value that combines safety with quality and convenience, and to further improve the quality of the security it offers.
Customer Service
In addition to continuously improving product quality, Sony is taking various steps to improve its responsiveness and its customer service capabilities, in line with the commitment set forth in the Sony Pledge of Quality: “Sony employees will always respect our customers’ viewpoints in striving to deliver product quality and customer service that exceed their expectations.” In customer service, this includes responding to changing customer needs, and in repair services this includes, building organizations designed to ensure the best possible repair service quality.
Organizational Structure
Sony has assigned CS officers in markets around the world where Sony products are sold. Under the guidance and supervision of the Corporate Executive in charge of Quality Management and heads of sales function companies, Sony has also introduced a set of key performance indicators to enhance customer service quality on a global level and has established a network of bases through which it provides services tailored to the needs of customers in each region.
Training for Customer Support Staff
Sony is committed to providing high-quality services to customers around the world. To achieve this, it provides ongoing training for both its own employees and those of service partners. In addition to focusing on the acquisition of new service technologies and the sharing of solutions to ensure issues are addressed swiftly and effectively, Sony is also making efforts to improve customer service and implement new tools. Staff also receive comprehensive ongoing training to help customers get the greatest possible enjoyment from their Sony products.
Customer Information Centers and Customer Service Improvements
Sony established its first customer information center in 1963 in Japan to respond to customer inquiries. Today, Sony has customer information centers worldwide, enabling it to provide prompt responses to customer needs that reflect customers’ perspectives, thereby helping Sony to improve the quality of its customer service.
In addition to support via telephone and e-mail, in several regions, Sony provides customer support via such means as live Internet chat sessions, support using social media and messaging apps, and online community forums where customers can share information to help each other find solutions. In these ways, Sony tailors its support to meet the increasingly diverse needs of its customers in every region of the world.
In addition, Sony conducts surveys to determine customer satisfaction at various touchpoints, and makes improvements based on the results in its efforts to continually improve customer satisfaction.
More Convenient, Eco-Friendly Instruction Manuals
To provide better explanations on how to use its products, Sony is bolstering its online support and providing online instruction manuals for improved searchability and greater convenience so that users are able to quickly find what they are looking for.
The Sony website has a support section that offers not only information on the products themselves but also additional support information on software upgrades and network service updates. This is designed to help users better understand Sony products, software, and services, as well as to enable them, when needed, to troubleshoot as quickly as possible. To accommodate a variety of user environments and enhance customer convenience, Sony also takes steps such as providing support information compatible with mobile devices and having websites available in various languages.
In terms of printed product manuals, Sony provides brief “startup guides” that focus on the information needed to begin using a product, such as how to connect and set up, and how to use the basic functions.
For some products sold globally, Sony has developed instruction manuals with minimal text and more extensive visuals, making it possible to include multiple languages in a single manual, which is expected to contribute to environmental protection by reducing paper consumption.
Repair and Service Network
Sony has repair and servicing locations in key regions around the world. To enhance customer satisfaction, Sony is working to meet customer needs by performing immediate problem diagnosis at the repair reception desk, improving repair quality and reducing the number of days required for repairs, among other efforts. In addition, Sony is continuously enhancing its service network to ensure that it can respond appropriately to repair requests in each region for each product. By strengthening the feedback mechanism for product quality based on repair information, Sony also aims to keep enhancing quality.
Improving the User Experience
Sony sees the customer experience as an essential aspect of quality. In order to gain an accurate understanding of the increasingly diverse needs of customers and to deliver user experiences that meet those needs, Sony has adopted Human-Centered Design (HCD) processes and ensures that its design efforts are always based on customers’ perspectives.