To better help smartphone users, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437) has increased assistance providers 10-fold to about 2,500 and will send highly knowledgeable salespeople to all of its shops by next fall.
The mobile carrier receives 4,000 to 5,000 smartphone inquiries a day, with 70 per cent of them concerning Google Inc’s Android operating system. Previously, 250 support staff in Tokyo and Okinawa handled all such calls.
Now, calls regarding smartphones can be taken by any of the company’s customer support centers across the country, since some 2,500 employees have undergone smartphone training. A support manual including Q-and-As has been prepared as well.
DoCoMo will also dispatch sales staffs that have earned internal certification for their smartphone expertise to all of its 2,400 retail shops by the end of next September. Currently there are only 20 such qualified salespeople, most of them in greater Tokyo.
DoCoMo’s smartphone sales are targeted at 1 million handsets in fiscal 2010. The company expects half of its customers to own smartphones in three to four years.