Our Policy and Strategy
The TOMY Group conducts various activities that prize two-way communication with our customers. We have established our own detailed Privacy Policy and TOMY Group Customer Service Policy. We take all comments, opinions, and expectations voiced by our customers seriously and always strive to take a customer-oriented approaches. This two-way communication helps us further improve product safety and quality and refine our broader business activities.
TOMY Group Customer Service Policy
-
Customer Interaction Principles
The TOMY Group Customer Service Department seeks to achieve our Purpose of “Quality Asobi can inspire and delight the world” by considering all issues from the customer’s perspective and standpoint, and reflecting customer opinions in the Group’s corporate activities.
-
Customer Interaction Guidelines
- Listen attentively to customer requests and strive to respond accurately and swiftly.
- Ensure proposed content of any interaction is just and fair. Always remember to be kind and strive to make the customer feel safe and comfortable at all times.
- Strive to respond resolutely to unreasonable demands.
- Share customer opinions internally and use those opinions to improve the quality of our products and services.
- Adhere to all relevant laws and regulations and our own internal standards to ensure customer rights are protected.
Management Structure
The TOMY Group Customer Service Department responds to inquiries by phone, email, or web chat. All opinions offered by customers are recorded in a database as instructive, prized information and are shared on bulletin boards that employees can access. Customer opinions are also fed back to relevant business divisions and involved parties. Any content that is considered to have a considerable impact on customer satisfaction or that relates to product safety and quality is shared with important committees or boards of TOMY, T-ARTS, TOMY TEC, TOMY IBIS and other Group companies to expediate a swift response and ensure that specific quality improvements and other appropriate measures are taken. In the event of an accident, we cooperate with TOMY’s Safety & Quality Assurance Group and set up a Risk Management Task Force under the direct supervision of our representative director and president in order to ensure a prompt and appropriate response, minimize damage, and take measures to prevent a recurrence.
We strive to aggregate customers’ data whenever possible in TOMY IBIS, which has PrivacyMark certification, to ensure any information is managed collectively and securely. TOMY IBIS implements a number of measures to maintain the certification and ensure a strong personal information management system, including establishing a dedicated management committee, holding regular progress meetings, conducting investigations, audits and inspections, and holding group study sessions. TOMY’s Internal Control & Audit Group also monitors TOMY IBIS’s personal information management systems whenever necessary.
Key Initiatives
Customer Services
The Customer Service Department receives various communications from customers, including comments, opinions, and expectations, letters from children, and questions about products and how to repair them. We use these customer opinions (Voice of Customer; VOC) to help implement pertinent revisions to the Asobi creation process, such as developing new products, improving services, or strengthening our distribution system. When we respond to customer queries, we pay special attention to safety aspects, such as whether there is a risk of injury with a toy, and to ensuring a toy does not impede a child’s creativeness in any way.
Important customer service-related information is conveyed via a dedicated website.
Strengthening VOC Activities
The Customer Service Department began social listening (gathering information on social media) in FY2023. This is an initiative to actively collect customer opinions, which are expanding to a wide variety of platforms in line with the changing times, and reflect more of them, as well as opinions received directly from customers, in our products and services.
Collected customer opinions are compiled into monthly analysis reports and daily social reports for each brand from a perspective of Customer Service Department itself, and the results are fed back to all employees, including top management.
We have also started using an in-house VOC data search and analysis dashboard to visualize a wide range of customer opinions, from opinions about toys to requests for improvements to related services and event management, such as the “LICCA Phone.” We aim to improve our corporate value by using this data in important meetings and for product and service planning and development.
Spread Out Customer Queries over Christmas Season
The Customer Service Department receives large volumes of customer queries during the peak Christmas season and more customers are having to wait longer for a response. To alleviate this problem, we try to spread out queries by appealing to customers in the period leading up to Christmas on our website and social media accounts to test any toy purchases that are operated by batteries well before Christmas. This initiative has been praised by Santas (customers) and retailers all over Japan for reducing customer waiting times and improving the quality of response.
New Repair Service to Satisfy Customer Requests
The TOMY Group will repair items for a fee if it has parts in stock. While we are sometimes not able to accept requests from customers to repair products that have been out of production for a long time, we are continuously considering how we might meet customer requests for such repairs.
With regard to PLARAIL in particular, we are focusing on training repair staff and passing on knowledge and skills so that PLARAIL products can be used by three generations of families for many years to come.
We believe that these initiatives are not just about repairing faulty parts, but are an important step towards gaining the trust of our customers. We are proud of our products that customers continue to use with care, which are the driving force behind our sustainable growth.
Protecting Personal Information
To ensure appropriate handling of personal information, the TOMY Group adheres to laws and regulations relating to personal information, and ensures all executives and staff are fully educated on our own Privacy Policy and other specific regulations and manuals. If the handling of personal information is to be outsourced, this will only be entrusted to outsourcing companies whose personal information management systems have been checked in advance and judged to be appropriate. We then sign a contract with the outsourcing company that fundamentally forbids any further subcontracting, and make them responsible for ensuring appropriate and strict handling to avoid any loss or leakage of personal information.
Ensuring Appropriate Management of Information
The TOMY Group has established its own Information Security Basic Rules to prevent the leakage or falsification of information and has taken measures to firmly protect all information assets, including personal information. We also conduct training sessions on information systems and information security for all employees and officers via e-learning and other systems.
