An action research on enhancing customer satisfaction at ORIX Rental Corporation

• Main Author: Saito, Kosuke
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: Consumer satisfaction; Customer services—Quality control
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6545; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/13557/viewcontent/Saito__Kosuke__Integrated_Action_Research_Paper__11683902__for_CD2.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The action research aimed to address poor customer experience and satisfaction against the services delivered at ORIX Rental Corporation (ORC) particularly in Fleet Management and Services Division (FMSD). Considering the report, “Future of Operating Lease”, published by Yasaki Research Institution (2017), it is determined that poor service in fleet operation is the remarkable constraint which is disabling ORC to maximize its opportunity since the fleet operation involves from day-to-day communication to major incident with assignees, which determine the ORC’s performance evaluation as a whole. The issue was also affecting motivation of FMSD employees, which translated to lower productivity in operation and ultimately, to further deterioration of customer experience. This negative spiral caused lower customer retention, which led to lower financial performance of ORC. By employing root cause analysis and several communication methods with stakeholders, concerned members and personnel, it was determined that the root cause of the issue stemmed from ineffective organizational structure and complicated internal processes, which led to unclear / lack of ownership of responsibility in operational process. In this action research paper, all stakeholders and heads collaborated to focus all efforts in addressing the poor customer experience and satisfaction. The first joint constructing of the issue and planning of the action led to the agreed upon organizational restructure to solve the identified root cause of the problem and to improve operational process. The second constructing and planning led to another agreed intervention of conducting training on ticketing system. After enacting those two action research cycles, there was a marked improvement in the turn-around time of services delivered by Fleet Management and Service Division, which will eventually enhance the customer satisfaction and experience. Despite of the positive improvement, eventually, the third constructing and planning raised the need of the agreed intervention, which was to conduct customer care training on Fleet Service Advisor (FSA). Besides, addressing an operational problem, the action research was also able to settle the unfairness among the employees at FMSD and somehow enhance their motivation. Those three action research cycles reminded all participants in this research that human resource, employees of ORC, remains as the essence in improving operation as they are the ones playing the most important role to accomplish day-to-day operations embedded in the process. Therefore, it is obvious that companies must continuously invest on employees to instill necessary knowledge and skills for them to productively perform their jobs and enhance their job quality. Lastly, those three action research cycles to make responsibility clear and to improve operational process required drastic change. The action research also emphasized how important change management is to control internal politics and to tame resistance to change in ORC adopting hierarchical organization like any other Japanese companies following Lewin’s change model, learning from the action research project and the various theories cited in Coghlan & Brannick (2010).