CASE STUDY｜RGI CORPORATION

The difficulty of new business development without customer information

Mr. Shinohara: RGI was founded by myself in January 2021. Currently, we mainly visit private homes and make proposals for new electric power and gas contracts, water purifiers, Internet access, and other solutions to help people realize comfortable lifestyles amidst the ever-changing lifestyle.
There is a lot of competition, and the key to success is "how we can propose what the customer wants." However, until we installed UPWARD, we were unable to successfully store the information of the customers we visited in our system, which was very inconvenient.

Mr. Takeda: In the beginning, we were steadily setting up pins on the housing information that appeared on Google Maps and making visits... but we could not keep track of the results and status of the visits. But I couldn't keep track of the results of my visits and their status. 

Mr. Shinohara: After all, we need information. I think there are many people who don't like the idea of having salespeople visit them in their homes. We should not make repeated visits to such people, and we want to give proper and appropriate information to those who allow us to visit a second or third time. Not only can we manage the risk well as a company, but it also makes it much easier for our salespeople to work and visit.
We were originally involved in a business that was commissioned by a major company to go around to private homes, but there we had a system terminal that could logdetail the details and results of each visit to each home. We realized that there was a huge difference between having this customer logand not having it, and decided to introduce a customer management system early on, even though we had only been in business for a short time.

As there are few customer management systems that can handle BtoC, you can certainly differentiate yourself.

Mr. Shinohara: We first introduced the Knowledge Suite from Knowledge Suite Corporation, but it did not meet our needs in that we had to type in some detailed information onsite, and we had to check customer inquiries on a company PC after returning to the office. This was not quite right for our needs.
We looked for a system that could manage customer information based on a map, and after comparing several systems, we finally decided to replace it with UPWARD because "it seemed to be able to manage customers from a map" and "it was easy to use even for B-to-C.
At that time, I felt that "there are few systems that can thoroughly manage customer information in B to C. UPWARD is also rather optimized for B to B sales.
That is why managing the history of visits and individual customer information thoroughly is definitely what differentiates UPWARD from other companies. We are thoroughly convinced that acquiring information with our feet and accumulating it in UPWARD will be our strength. 

Mr. Amano: The first visit is just to obtain information, but UPWARD is very useful for the second or third visit. By having the history and information on how the client responded to us the last time, we are able to conduct business with a certain degree of countermeasures in place.
We are not making one-sided proposals, but rather optimal proposals based on what the client has told us, which helps the client to remember the company name RGI.

Mr. Shinohara: For those of us who took this kind of system for granted in our previous jobs, we no longer feel that it would be hard to do without it. Thanks to our proposal based on customer information, in which we go back to the past response history and build up an image of activities before visiting them, we have not yet heard that they were that displeased with the system, even though it was founded with the Corona disaster. In fact, competitors were rather reluctant to visit us under the circumstances, so it seems that Face to Face communication has been successful in part. 

All the information obtained from door to door and by foot is used as a 'foundation for the future'

Mr. Takeda: Currently, UPWARD maps are operated separately for BtoC sales and BtoB sales, which we will challenge in the future. Since sales activity histories are entered immediately after each visit based on the map, I feel that the system is very useful as a foundation for retaining information.

Mr. Shinohara: For future expansion into corporate sales, customer attributes and frequency of visits will have a greater impact on the product line, so I think UPWARD can be used to develop successful cases and winning patterns horizontally.

Mr. Amano: It is still good to be able to register using a mobile device. I have heard the same sales members say that it is easy to do and handle.
Also, during sales activities, we sometimes receive inquiries from customers who have signed contracts with us, but until now we had to return to the office or contact the administration department to find out what was going on. It is also very helpful in terms of being able to quickly search for customer information.

Mr. Shinohara: I think one of the unique aspects of our approach is that we also incorporate information other than that of "customers" into UPWARD. When I visit condominiums in the area I am in charge of, I also investigate and include information on "vacancies" and "absences" onsite.
By steadily researching and accumulating all of this information using my feet, I can formulate a strategy for sales on my second and subsequent visits, saying, "This room seems to have been recently occupied, so this product would be useful. The management also provides us with a certain amount of information on apartments in advance, and we believe that maps filled with this information will surely become a "powerful weapon" in the next two to three years.

Accumulating customer information from the very beginning, because we are looking ahead to the next phase of the project.

Shinohara: I think that a typical sales organization is a system in which salespeople become exhausted. There is a quota every month, and even if you meet it, the next month it becomes a dead end again...the longer you keep doing this, the more exhausted you become. We want to solve this by building a solid customer base.
We have been thorough from the beginning and have succeeded in making customer information UPWARD and "company-attached" instead of "personalized" in salespeople's heads or in memos. I am sure that none of our competitors have such a solid customer information management system for a company that conducts steady door-to-door sales activities.
We are currently in the phase of accumulating information, but our first goal is to acquire information on 10,000 customers, so that we can firmly shift to up-selling and cross-selling in the next phase. Rather than always starting with new information, we will continue to systematize and streamline our operations so that we can start the first of the month with a certain level of sales potential. 

Mr. Amano: In the future, as we develop corporate sales, we will need more detailed information than ever before. We will need to discuss internally how to preserve this information, but I would like to make our organization easy to work with and highly productive for all employees. 

Mr. Shinohara：As I said, the ability to use the information obtained through legwork for more than just door-to-door sales is a major value of a customer management system such as this. I see great potential in the fact that the information we are currently collecting in the field can be segmented and extracted by segment in the future.
We hope to continue to grow our business by creating an environment that is easy for our salespeople to work in and conduct business in.