Olympus: Developing the Customer Centric Culture

Olympus is a japanese global company, specialising in optical and precision digital technologies in the medical sector, mainly for endoscopic and endosurgical equipment. The brand Olympus has been widely known in association with photo cameras, today a minor business for the company. Olympus is a heavy investor in innovation which is intended to be driven «according to the customers needs and hopes». Therefore a recent policy for a «higher attention to the customer» (doctors, nurses, medical technical people) was announced by Top management. This implies that corporate culture has to become much more customer centric. Two main programs have been organised to supprt this ambitious cultural change: Customer Satisfaction Management (Csm) and Customer Focus (Cf). The two programs are both on the way in Olympus Italy, as a test for a later wide application in the whole European Region. Csm is based on an articulated survey on the different segments of customers, in order to understand their evaluation of Olympus performances in every touch point between Olympus and customers. Cf is an internal analysis aimed at identfying and solving all the critical points which can harm the quality of the performance Olympus is delivering to customers. Such critical points are identified within the processes and practices deployed to serve the customers. This analysis is developed by all the employees of the Olympus Italy: they are organised around a methodology and guided to identify the critical points and to sketch solutions which can improve quality for the customers. The underlying logic of this project is that the level of Cs («what customer see») depends on the quality of the internal processes («what customers do not see») ending in the touch points with customers. Therefore the core of this case is the link that is established between Csm and Cf projects.