Creating a Feedback Loop with Customers as the Starting Point! Report on the UPWARD Users Group Meeting "UPWARD Challengers vol.1

Previous challenges in communicating with customers

UPWARD has been conducting interviews with existing users, but there has not been a forum for users to exchange opinions on how they are using the system, and many of them have been sending out one-sided messages.
In July of this year, UPWARD changed its internal organization and decided to create an "Account Executive (AE) Team" that will include both online and offline sales, transcending the boundaries between inside sales (IS), who have online customer touchpoint, and field sales (FS), who have offline customer touchpoint. The AE team will be a new "Account Executive (AE) Team".
In addition, in order to work together for the success of our customers, the number of Customer Success (CS) team members was significantly increased, and a company-wide effort to communicate more in line with potential needs and visions was begun.
In the process, we moved to form a user group community as a starting point for strengthening "horizontal connections among users" as an environment for customers to utilize UPWARD, and as a feedback loop to elicit information from customers.

[Implementation].

Customer-driven feedback loops are now indispensable.

This is an excerpt from Kaneki's presentation on the day of the Users Conference.
The impact of the spread of the new coronavirus has been significant and has changed the way we communicate with our customers. Offline visits have decreased and online customer touchpointhas increased, changing to an era in which our customers have more information. We are now in an era of being "chosen by our customers" rather than being strongly promoted by us.

So what should companies do?
The answer, according to Kaneki, is "customer-centric," focusing not on the market but on the customer in front of them. He also suggests a "digital feedback loop," in which information obtained from customers is fed back to the company and used to optimize the product.

THIS USER MEETING WAS REALIZED IN ORDER TO PROMOTE THIS "CUSTOMER-CENTRIC" AND "DIGITAL FEEDBACK" AT UPWARD AS WELL. WE PLAN TO CONTINUE TO HOLD THIS MEETING ON A REGULAR BASIS AS A PLACE FOR US TO PROACTIVELY CONNECT WITH OUR CUSTOMERS AND FOR OUR CUSTOMERS TO CONNECT WITH EACH OTHER ABOUT THEIR SUCCESSES AND EXPERIENCES.

In times of shortage
How should sales organizations respond?

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[Voice of a Participating User

In the questionnaire answered by the users who participated in the event, many of them commented that they received hints about their own issues by learning from other companies' case studies. Here are some of the comments we received.
We have been struggling to establish UPWARD in our company, but hearing about the ingenuity and efforts of other companies to establish UPWARD gave us hints and motivation.
"It was good to hear specific stories about how they improved their sales challenges at the time of implementation, rather than just success stories."
"It was interesting to hear about the case studies of each company, as it gave me a concrete image of how they are using the system."
"I would like to know more about concrete examples of use and solutions to the issues that arose during the introduction of the system."

[CHANGES IN UPWARD THROUGH THE ONLINE USER'S GROUP].

As Kaneki explained in his presentation, "Customer-centric" means to focus not on the market but on the customer in front of you, and "Digital feedback loop" means to feed back information obtained from the customer to the company for continuous optimization. At first glance, this may seem a difficult task, but I believe that this Users Conference is a small embodiment of this concept.
By facing our customers, we can improve our understanding of their issues and the state of problem solving, and then feed back the high-resolution information we obtain to our organization, so that we can always face our customers in the most up-to-date and optimal state.
What are the problems of our partner customers, and what value can we provide to them? We will continue to carefully nurture the users' group as a place to practice "customer-centric" by pursuing the granularity and pursuing the life-size image of our customers.
UPWARD plans to hold more events for users in October and beyond. UPWARD is planning to hold more events for users in October and beyond.
Please look forward to UPWARD's plans to become more customer-centric in the future.

[Finally.

UPWARD will continue to be your partner for mobile workers.
We look forward to your continued support of UPWARD.

Experienced UPWARD customer successes will answer any questions you may have about your sales issues.
Please let us know your concerns.