Please tell us about your business, roles, and responsibilities

Mr. Umezawa :

Under the mission of “seeking the blossoming of new culture by promoting the convergence of Eastern and Western cultures,” Daito Bunka Institute operates three schools: Daito Bunka University, Daito Bunka University Daiichi High School, and Daito Bunka University Aogiri Kindergarten. As an Executive Director, Secretary General and Planning Director, I assist the chairman of the board and I am in charge of general management and operation of the institute, including corporate decision-making procedures, financial and office organizations, human resources affairs etc.

 

As the Chief of Staff in the Institute’s General Information Center Office, I am in charge of information systems including network, server, backbone network and client PC, and I also take care of adoption of IT devices, maintenance, and operation management.

 

Ms. Maekawa:

In the Faculty Course Center located in Daito Bunka University, we support acquirement of teacher’s licenses and finding career paths as a teacher. As a member of the center, I am in charge of gathering and delivering information related to job and volunteer opportunities in schools for students who wish to become teachers.

Tell us more about some of the problems you had before using LINE WORKS, and what has led you to adopt the service

Mr. Watanebe :

PCs used by office workers who handle students’ personal information can only be accessed through intranet for safety purposes, and in principle, taking them outside of school is prohibited. Nevertheless, this factor has been impeding work efficiency, and we felt the need to create an environment where information can be accessed from the outside, and promote communication among employees.

 

Ms. Maekawa :

For students who aim to become teachers, we post information about teacher recruitment in the school portal and also on the bulletin board. However, as it is difficult to catch students’ attention with the bulletin board in the faculty course center, we were searching for an alternative means to share information that could substitute the paper notices, which were quite cumbersome to make and replace.

 

Mr. Watanabe :

After comparing and reviewing various tools, we came to notice LINE WORKS, which has the same interface with LINE many young employees use. We decided to introduce the service because there was no special training needed before the introduction, and because operating and managing the service didn’t seem burdensome.

Did the school establish any special operating rules when introducing LINE WORKS?

Mr. Watanabe :

We made a regulation prohibiting employees from describing information related to students’ personal information, and informed the employees through orientations, LINE WORKS’ ‘Home,’ school intranet and etc. But we tried to stay away from unduly detailed regulations as much as possible, in order to bring about the active use of LINE WORKS.

 

Moreover, this coincided with the time when we provided iPads to all employees to pursue paperless work environment, so we kitted and distributed the LINE WORKS app.

 

For office workers who were not provided with iPads, we allowed using LINE WORKS through personal devices like mobile phones. But since we also ban taking iPads outside of school in principle, we allowed BYOD (Bring your own device) for all employees, creating an environment where information and work-related contacts can be shared, regardless of time and place.

Tell us more in detail about how LINE WORKS is being used, and the effects made after

Mr. Umezawa :

Prior to the implementation of the “Work Style Reform Act,” we organized employees into groups so that they could voluntarily start projects on how to change the way they work. About 70 out of 200 employees took part in the project, even though it was a voluntary activity outside of working hours. There were also many people who wanted to know about the project’s progress but could not participate, so for them I uploaded a video explaining the project’s guidelines in the LINE WORKS message room as a kickoff. Afterwards, we conducted a survey with LINE WORKS’ ‘Form’ (which has just been introduced) on pending issues, and we could collect so many responses compared to the surveys conducted in the past. Based on the responses, we established six subcommittees, and they are utilizing LINE WORKS along with discussions and face-to-face meetings.

It wasn’t easy for employees to participate in the existing project while juggling with daily work, but LINE WORKS has enabled them to exchange ideas anywhere, anytime—message rooms almost serve the role of group study rooms. Although young employees find it quite challenging to speak out in a typical face-to-face meeting, ‘Message Room’ enables everyone to participate in the discussion regardless of age or rank, and also to check previous conversations and review the flow of discussions. I think this is a big strength of LINE WORKS. Although these groups are a place for voluntary learning for employees, without particularly aiming to make proposals to reform policies, we plan to combine the results achieved in each subcommittee and use them as a reference for establishing policies to change the way we work.

Tell us about how both Institute’s General Information Center and Faculty Course Center are utilizing LINE WORKS

Ms. Maekawa :

I consulted Watanabe from the Institute’s General Information Center about how we can efficiently deliver information related to teachers’ recruitment. He recommended creating the center’s LINE WORKS account and sending information to students’ LINE accounts just like [LINE@.] Based on his counseling, we built an environment where we can connect with students’ LINE accounts through external conversations, and send information about recruitment and volunteer opportunities in message rooms through PDF files.

 

After recruiting applicants who had wished to receive a LINE alarm among students, most of the students who had completed the teacher training course have registered. Students can additionally fill in information about name, student ID, major, and the kind of local government or school (elementary·middle·high) they wish to apply for through tags; based on this information we use the ‘search’ feature in message rooms to search for tags, and send information customized for each student.

 

Of course, there are students who do not use LINE, so we still post information on the portal as well—but we no longer need to worry about the burden of replacing paper notices on the school bulletin board. When we send information through LINE WORKS, students either reply very fast or we can see the ‘read’ indication, so we can actually feel that the information is actually being delivered to the students.

How would you like to utilize LINE WORKS to further boost schoolwork efficiency in the future?

Mr. Umezawa :

I realized that we can build an environment where it is easy for many people to take part through the use of communication tools. As it is easy for a university to turn into a vertical organization, it is crucial that we strengthen horizontal connections between departments and collect opinions to solve this problem. I would like to continue to utilize LINE WORK’s various features for this mission.

Mr. Watanabe :

Daito Bunka University is located in both Tokyo and Saitama, so we are considering conferences to connect the two campuses through voice and video calls.

Ms. Maekawa :

As there is a lot of teacher recruitment information concerning graduates in the Faculty Course Center, we are considering supporting graduates (along with undergraduates) by delivering information to them as well.

※All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Tell us about your company and individual roles.

What were the issues before LINE WORKS introduction?

Mr. Satoshi：

Previously, we used computers installed on-site and PHS to either deliver instruction or contact the employees outside the office. At that time, if we were to deliver detailed instructions on site, we had to go to the computer or print out the instructions. Thinking back to those times, it was a situation with full of unnecessary steps. For example, if our customer wants to make choices among the goods available in various color or pattern options, we had to actually print the attached photos and deliver it to the site. For this reason, we were finding a solution to reduce such work burden.

Mr. Shinya：

Scheduling with colleagues was very hard. Because we could only check the schedule through computers at the headquarters, I had to communicate with them through LINE.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used?

In the past, when unexpected accident occurs, the leader had reported to me about the issue. Then, I contacted the representative again to make decision on countermeasure. Whereas, we are now using LINE WORKS to communicate directly with the person in charge. If I join that chatting room, I can immediately understand the situation and countermeasure. If necessary, I can join chatting room even later and this is one of LINE WORKS’ convenience.

Mr. Shinya：

Managing schedule became much comfortable. I often have to closely contact and affiliate with the 9 local managers, managers of each branch, and colleagues from Store Innovation Department as well as from other Departments. While doing so, I also have to implement the business. After the introduction of LINE WORKS, however, it is now possible to check others’ schedules, making it easier for me to figure out their conditions of the working schedule.

What were the issues before LINE WORKS introduction?

Mr. Sawato：

I always thought that the communication which everyone can talk freely about the issues is very important. As office communication has become active than before, both quality and quantity of the communication has also increased. It is because LINE WORKS was well matched with our company culture, which is everyone participates in the communication regardless of the positions.

 

I think it is very important to share their own ideas or meeting logs with others, instead of keeping them on their own. It is also a great advantage that LINE WORKS makes it possible for us to make such information sharing possible. Unlike phone calls, LINE WORKS enables sharing information at preferred time frame. With this, I believe that LINE WORKS will be the main tool, which replaces the phone calls near in the future.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

Mr. Kurosawa :

After opening the first store called ‘Temomin’, which provides service with an affordable rate system of 1,000 yen per 10 minutes, the company is currently managing about 180 branches nationwide, with 6 different types. I am Director of this company and also General manager at the System Solution Department.

 

Mr. Ishi :

I work for both Financial Accounting Department and System Solution Department. I took part in LINE WORKS introduction this time.

What were the issues before LINE WORKS introduction?

Mr. Kurosawa :

In our company, there is a lot of business contact made between the store managers and staffs. We used to use personal email or LINE in addition to the phone calls before. For this reason, we were all worried about company information security and therefore, wanted to properly manage the issue.

The branch managers mostly contact one another asking for the support. Further, in our company, when manager cannot handle the customer request with available staffs at the branch, the manager request support to the other branches, in which both closely located and have available time.

Mr. Ishi :

When asking for support, we first checked the systemically shared reservation list of each branch. After that, we either sent emails or made phone calls to the branches we think available to support our branch. This way, however, was very much inefficient and took a lot of unnecessary time. For this reason, we were all thinking about other option to contact other branches other than this.

 

Mr. Kurosawa :

We have considered using the cloud-like systematic groupware, which headquarters staffs were using at the moment. We soon found out that it is impossible to expand its utilization up to company-wide due to its high cost. Other than groupware, we also considered chatting tools as well as SNS. However, those tools were imperfect in certain ways. Specifically, security as well as admin feature of those tools were unstable to implement it as the group communication tool. Even if we have decided to implement a new tool, we still worried about if it would be too difficult for us to introduce the tool to the employees. That is because we already have went through several experience in failing the introduction of communication tool since we have employees with low IT literacy.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

Mr. Kurosawa :

I first encountered LINE WORKS with its subway advertisement, and soon interested in the tool. At the same moment, our CEO offered me about introducing LINE WORKS to our company. As a result, we started to use LINE WORKS with the free trial version.

Although LINE WORKS is paid service, we found the tool very attractive since it offers service with reasonable price. The tool which we used to utilize was so expensive that we could only provide the accounts to either executives or the employees with high position within our company. However, we expected that, with LINE WORKS, we may provide the accounts to those branch managers and even to the staffs at each branch. Also, because the usability of LINE WORKS is similar to that of LINE, we believed that all the employees could use the tool without feeling burden about its usage. And with this idea, we promoted a concept ‘Let’s use LINE WORKS when emailing at the field’ to our company.

In fact, starting from March, 2017, we started to use free trial version of LINE WORKS. While using so, we did not find any problem or concerning factor from the tool. As a result, we started to actually use paid version of LINE WORKS in June, 2017. We provided the accounts to those field staffs under the explanation of ‘Business version of LINE’. Without having to provide further instructions or explanations regarding its usage, LINE WORKS was naturally used by those staffs and settled as the company communication tool.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

Mr. Kurosawa :

LINE WORKS is being used mainly for the manager of each branches. Most of them are using LINE WORKS with the smartphone which the company rented out. When asking for support, the manager can send message, asking ‘can you send ○ staffs at ○’o clock to our branch?’ to the number of message rooms created based on the location. This way, the manager can send the message to other branch managers simultaneously. Since branch managers as well as area manager are all in one chatting room, there is no need to contact each for scheduling. Also, the manager can make contact everyone at once. Unlike making phone calls, we all can instantly check and reply to the message received. Therefore, asking for support as well as finding the available staff can be held smoother than before.

Further, we used to have not personal-level but the branch-level email accounts, it took a great amount of time communicating with one another. After the introduction of LINE WORKS, however, we can work in a smoother way as LINE WORKS enables us to directly contact and receive the response from the person. We sometimes use Calling feature when making business contacts.

Mr. Ishi :

Branch managers share photos of their branch displays and POPs and use them for future reference. Photos of potential building options for newly launched branch or the photos to check cleaning condition are also shared through LINE WORKS message. Easy photo sharing UI of LINE WORKS is very attractive.

Example of photo-sharing between branches

What are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Mr. Kurosawa :

After the introduction of LINE WORKS, we have been able to both receive the responses and coordinate the schedule within 5 minutes. What is noticeable is that the same process required 10 to 20 minutes to process in the past. Requesting for support is the most important for store management, and smoothness of its process is the biggest change made after the introduction of LINE WORKS. Along with the speed, LINE WORKS also broadened our communication range. In the past, the schedule coordination could only be held in between limited number of branches since we had to call each branch asking for the support.

With LINE WORKS, however, we are able to send requests to the branches located throughout the region at once. In addition to ‘Temomin’, we are able to request support for ‘Global therapist’ as well. This implies that the supporting system has established above and beyond the region. Also, we think that the chances of not getting the reservations due to lacking its support have also decreased.

Mr. Ishi :

As we are utilizing LINE WORKS, we could receive more reservations from our customers. As the chances of not getting the reservation have decreased, we believe that LINE WORKS has contributed to our company with regards to increase in customer satisfaction rate as well as increase in company revenue.

 

Mr. Kurosawa :

LINE WORKS is receiving positive opinion from the field staffs such as ‘it is easy to use’ and ‘it does not take as much time as email, and therefore, feeling comfortable using it’.

 

With LINE WORKS, sending ‘Okay’ to the communication partner is enough as a response. Because we can find out whether communication partner read the message or not through ‘Read’ notification, overall LINE WORKS communication can be held in much comfortable manner. We also think that communication within employees became much serious and valuable. After the introduction, we think that the chances of branch managers to communicate one another have also increased. As they can casually discuss about issues such as operational rules of the branches, the revenue goals of each region, or even about their personal condition and staff schedules, active information sharing is possible.

Mr. Kurosawa :

Such flawless introduction of LINE WORKS implies that field staffs were longing for the tool such as LINE WORKS. Although LINE WORKS is activated to only those branch managers for now, but we are planning to provide accounts to those staffs. With this, we are expecting active company communication near in the future.

 

Unlike email, which general communication atmosphere is formal and firm, LINE WORKS enables us to have friendly communication. Up until today, field employees could not raise up their voice for the idea and opinion.

 

However, from now on, we would love to encourage them to speak out for their opinion. By utilizing various functions inside the LINE WORKS, we are expecting to make field atmosphere much more active and joyful than before.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

Mr. Shou :

Our company is a creative company, centering client works. We are in charge of consulting services such as analysis, strategy design and planning in marketing and communication that companies and administrative organizations, brands and products require. And, we are also in charge of production works, actually produce and deploy works according to the plan. In the marketing or creative field, It is common to divide into two types of companies. There are companies only taking responsible for strategy and planning, while some other companies are dealing with production solely. Unlike this, our company deals with both, and therefore one-stop operation is one of our company’s characteristics.

What were the issues before the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Mr. Shou :

In the past, there was a lot of communication held via email, SNS messenger, and phone calls. Basically, checking the document and its data has been carried out by attaching to mail or SNS. Except for some projects, schedules were managed in a very analog way, such as checking at the meeting or filling out the whiteboard.

 

First of all, the first problems was that it took significant amount of time when confirming various types of information. To take our company as an example, either the designs or products can be opened to the public only after the president confirmed to be okay.

 

Even though we strived to received confirmation from our boss, we could not receive the feedback instantly from our boss via email and phone calls as well. If we were not to receive a confirmation until our president return to the office, the manager who referred had to remain in the company for minor changes. The president also had to come back to the office from outside working on a deliberately late hour to check the product. Secondly, we spent too much time during the meeting. We had to wait for all the participants to be present at the meeting. Or even when the information that was shared in advance the meeting was not well unified, we even had to explain the purpose of the meeting and further goal of the meeting. With this, we felt that we were wasting the time needed to be spent reasonably.

Mr. Kazuo :

In terms of scheduling, each employee was managing its own schedule with individual tool. Because of this, when one of the mandatory meeting participants could not attend the meeting, we should check schedules of other participants individually and re-schedule the meeting. And, this was burdening and inefficient. Also, even if we send the emails to the other employees, we could not find out whether the recipients checked the email. Therefore, we had to call back to figure out whether the recipients actually receive and checked the email sent. I am spending most of time working outside these days. It was burdening to work outside since I could not check the issues if not turning on the laptop and connecting to the Wi-Fi. Due to this, I had to come back to office to deal with the issues. I believe this contributed to the delay in making responses.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

Mr. Shou :

We already acknowledged about LINE WORKS since February, 2017 through news report. Since our company acquires the P mark (Privacy mark system) and ISMS (Information Security Management System), so we need to protect privacy and security thoroughly. We have considered introducing other groupware tools for several times in the past. In cost-related perspective as well too many features, however, found to be mismatch to our company. For this reason, we ended up not using any of them. Unlike other groupware, LINE WORKS has benefits of customizing its tool to make it fit to our company style and also has simple and clear UI which enables us to easily accustomed to the tool. There was no extra feature too. Because we did not find any issue with related to security, we decided to introduce the tool to our company.

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used? Also, what are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Mr. Kazuo :

Modifying schedules and information sharing has become convenient. Since we now can see the schedules of all the employees, it is very helpful when scheduling. We can simply modify the schedule just by sending ‘Are you available at this time?’. Also, when holding a meeting, we can share the agenda through Home function and make sure all the meeting participants check, bring idea and opinion about the agenda and even think of the result in advance. By doing so, we found that the time we spent on the meeting have decreased than the past.

 

In the past, there were a few employees too busy reading the email with the agenda. Due to ‘Read’ notification, however, we can assure ourselves that all the employees have read the email. LINE WORKS is currently used for company communication, while email is used for communication outside the company. This method has been established and settled as official communication. As a result to this, the number of shared emails that were previously close to 100 to 200 per day has dropped to less than half.

Mr. Shou :

What has changed the most is that we now rarely use email or SNS for company communication. We did not force to quit using such tool. Instead, it vanished naturally, and started to use LINE WORKS as an alternatives. We encouraged employees to make chatting room per each project. This way, we can follow up the overall process of project simply by checking the messages inside the chatting room. This is very efficient way of working. When sharing information or document, we are also attaching the files to the chatting room. It also possible to instantly check the attached files at the chatting room using LINE WORKS viewer.

 

After that, we can either send comments on the documents or just simply send okay sticker to the chatting room when there is no extra issues to be discussed. Like this, remote communication gets faster than before. We no longer have to wait for our president to come back to the office for the confirmation. And, this led all the employees to process and finish their work faster. Similar to this, it was general to make comments like ‘Let’s talk about this after returning to the office’ or ‘Let’s share this agenda at the office’. Just by using chatting room, however, we can immediately have conversation. With this, we rarely hold quick face-to-face meeting, standing in the corner of the office. In fact, in the field of creative works, efficiency and short working time cannot go along with quality. I used to work at the office until late night during peak season. But after the introduction of LINE WORKS, the finishing time has shortened overwhelmingly. I felt that as more spare time the employees have, the better productivity the entire company have.

Our company also schedule and operate events. From the preparation and installation of the equipment to the actual events, there are times when we communicate to all employees of the company on the date of the event. This way, we can show all the employees how to prepare for the installation or how the booth is being completed. That is, we can show  whole company about the overall operation process, including employees who are not directly involved in the event. As a result to this, employees, even if they were not originally participated in the event operation, could easily feel as if it is their own work and even appreciate one another for the accomplishments. We definitely think that it has heightened the sense of unity among employees.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Tell us about your company and your role

Our company do sales business which buy and sell the used car. As a manager, I am responsible for store management such as managing sales, store employee schedules, and customer service status.

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used? Also, what are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

We are using LINE WORKS for daily communication with store staffs, area manager, headquarters, and customers.

 

We are checking consulting reviews with the store staffs in real time

 

For example, when customer visits our store and asks about the cars or asking for a consultation, the assigned staff often contact via LINE WORKS and ask questions like ‘the client requested this, how should I do?’. We also use LINE WORKS when we visit the actual site to purchase the used cars. Once we visit our customers house, we can take photos of the car and immediately send them to the office. This enables both field and office workers to check the condition of the car together in real time. This way, the customer no longer have to wait. As a manager, it has become easier for me to take control of the works since I can check the condition of the consulting in real time.

 

It has become easier to communicate with headquarters about price negotiation

Overall process of purchasing used car is that once we send information through exclusively used application, headquarters notifies an appraised value of that car. And, if the customer does not satisfies with the estimated value and have to adjust the value, we negotiate its price with the headquarters via LINE WORKS. Previously, we held such communication through SMS with the company given cell phones. However, it was not easy for staffs to send SMS to the boss or the headquarters. Furthermore, it was difficult to find out whether they have read the message or not. Inside LINE WORKS, however, there is Read notification feature is provided as well as we can also send both photo or video. Unlike email which requires to turn on the PC to check the attached files, no extra effort is required when checking the file. If the amount of money negotiated goes beyond my approval authority, an area manager manages the deal. At times, there are cases when the manager could not reach their phone due to meetings. For this reason, such communication is held via LINE WORKS. The tool has enabled us to communicate comfortably, and most importantly, we felt that this kind of contact is most suitable for LINE WORKS.

We communicate efficiently with our headquarters by transferring photos

The headquarters often contact us with regards to management and installation of the store. For example, when we have to change the vehicle or store layout for newly held event, the headquarters send photos of other stores for reference. This definitely let us to have better idea on the overall store layout. We sometimes send photos of vehicle layouts as well as condition of banner installation and receive feedbacks.

Example of store managing communication

We can communicate with our clients faster via LINE

Using the ‘Connection to LINE’ feature, we are using LINE when communicating our the customers. During the consultation, we ask ‘is It okay to send related information through LINE WORKS?’. With this question, many of the clients gladly accept the suggestion and tell us their LINE account. Since we can immediately check the message delivered through LINE on LINE WORKS, faster communication with the clients is possible. Not just about the contract, but also the contacts regarding the aftercare have also increased.

Example of communication between staff and client via LINE

How does the communication with the customer changed after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

What changed the most is that we can make response to the requests from the clients faster than before. When customers send messages like ‘Can we do this?’ or ‘I want to do this part as this’ via LINE, we can immediately check the message and send the response. It is definitely faster than phone call or email. For email, we can only send the response after we come back to our own house and turn on the computer. For this reason, we could only provide the customer service only during the time frame we assigned. With LINE and LINE WORKS, we could both check and response immediately to the messages, and therefore, we could solve the issue on the day it has occurred.

 

Close connection with our customers has speeded up the time taken for problem resolution and the time it takes to sign the contract has also been reduced.

Since LINE is easier for clients to send messages to us without feeling burdensome, we are receiving many messages regarding various purpose, from asking simple questions like ‘how to make spare key?’ to tough and serious questions. Because LINE WORKS account is verified as an official account of the company, it also draws the feelings of trustworthiness from our customers. As quality of overall communication has improved, we can contact each other more delightfully than before. As psychological distance has been put closer than before, this has resulted in having a lot more customers who chose our company. And, we believe that this is what differentiates our company from other competition companies. We are pleasure to receive messages from our customers about automobile-related issues and concerns like ‘I want to film my car’ or ‘I soon to have car inspection’. We are also receiving positive feedbacks from our clients that contacting via LINE is much easier to communicate with our company than phone call or email.

How does the communication with the customer changed after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Communicating with headquarters or interoffice communication has become much more convenient than before. Previously, when we want to contact someone in our company, we first had to check the profile and find detailed contact information and either send email or make phone call to them after. And, this was extremely inconvenient. With LINE WORKS, however, we can simply look up the contacts information on the application and send message immediately. With this, it became convenient to make contacts to others.

 

Other than this, I am recently participating in an internal project at our office called ‘Sakura Project’, which pursues the greater environment for the women to work. The project is divided into several teams and where I am located is in charge of posting contents on the company blog. To make contents, I often have to make contacts to the employees whom I have never met before. Even under such circumstance, I use LINE WORKS group chatting room to contact those people conveniently.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

Ms. Ito：

‘Nail & Eyelash Syisyu’, a beauty company located in Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, and Hawaii, has a first-class nail artists and a trained eyelash therapists. We offer great technique and design at a reasonable price.

Many customers are re-visiting our shop because the price becomes cheaper with frequent visits to the store and post-completion beauty, which lasts for long. Recently, we also operating nail school as well as nail shops.

What were the issues before the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Ms. Ito：

Before introducing LINE WORKS, the internal communication methods were mainly e-mail, telephone, and Fax placed on each store. Only limited staff members use their own LINE to communicate when there was an urgent communication needed.

 

We were unable to accept phone calls during working away from the office or greeting customers. If an employee continues to use the phone because of in-house contact, he or she may not be able to answer the customer’s reservation call.

So, we mainly contact via e-mail in order to avoid disruption of the sales. However, in the case of e-mail, the time for employees to check with their store’s public PC was limited. As a result, they would often receive a reply in three to four days. It was difficult to get urgent communication such as cautions when placing an order, defective products, and claim response, so the content that needs to be implemented the next day was not delivered properly. Moreover, We were also anxious about the fact that even though we emailed every detail, there were always some missing items founded in confirmation process.

Ms. Ezaki：

I was usually notified by the store’s email about staff members schedule management and new products. However, it was often not delivered properly because miscommunication happens or verbal mistakes occur during delivering messages. We have used FAX many times, but we need to copy what we received from FAX and deliver that message to every staff member or each employee takes a picture of it on their Smartphone and saves it again, which is a waste of both time and paper.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

Ms. Ito：

Our company listens to employees’ voices by having private meeting with them about difficulties during regular meetings with managers and employees. But in a survey, some employee claimed that contact has been made on off-day. In order to address that complaint, I felt that I should introduce information sharing-tool that is more convenient than personal SNS but still available to all employees. I consulted with a company that had a regular transaction and that company introduced LINE WORKS as a tool to ensure that all employees are informed.

Because this is a tool that is used by store staffs that are unfamiliar with IT, we decided that LINE WORKS, the enterprise version of LINE that everyone uses normally, would be easy to use. LINE WORKS has a similar interface to LINE. For this reason, I could decide to adopt LINE WORKS with confidence.

When LINE WORKS was introduced, every store staffs registered their accounts and within a week, all employees completed log-in. Started with using chat rooms between the store managers, we gradually began to use chat rooms by store or information transmission via using the Home function.

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used?

What are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Ms. Ezaki：

If you send a chat, you can tell who read it at a glance. So even if you don’t get a reply, you can assure that the message has been delivered. Information was sent to each employee’s smartphone in batches, which eliminates the need to operate copy machine or shredder; it saves not only FAX paper or trashes but also employee’s time burden. The schedule can be viewed on a smartphone, so you can check it right away even if you are not at the store. An employee just needs to check LINE WORKS, which is very convenient way.

 

Also until now, we did not contact with other store managers, but LINE WORKS’ ‘Store manager chat room’ enables to contact easily and we can share other stores’ information such as sales management and customer acquisition. For example, if weekend sales are not good enough, we listen and refer to how other store’s status or method of attracting customers.

Ms. Ito：

We think the biggest effect is that field staff can notice the contact from headquarters right away. So far, we have failed to check email or missed confirmation. However, now we can directly deliver a message to all of the employees without having middle steps like through a store manager or a mail. Especially, if we showed pictures of a nail in a meeting before, people only who was in a meeting could know it. However, now that we can send files directly, employees who aren’t in a meeting can also see that picture and I think that is the biggest advance.

 

We can reach each employee one by one, so every contact has been made and no one has been left out. Information that delivered only to the manager level has started to pass on to entry-level workers and this gradually increases employee’s responsibility. We think this is because workers keep in mind that ‘I am also a valuable employee’ and participate in work as a team. Because our industry is sensitive to trends, we think using the latest tools like LINE WORKS will also motivate our employees.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

Mr. Yamazaki  :

Our company is operating 166 Nippon Rent-A-Car sales offices located in both Tokyo metropolis and Kanagawa prefecture. Currently, we have about 2,000 employees including part-time job staffs working in the company. Also, we are managing about 10,000 cars including lease cars.

Further, System department is in charge of general management and support for the office systems including the ones from the headquarters and all the sales offices.

Mr. Shimomura :

I am responsible for customers and vehicle inspections as well as dispatch requests.

How did your company share the information before LINE WORKS implementation? Also, What were the issues then?

Mr. Yamazaki :

“The major risk factor that we found when using email as our communication tool was that there was a high possibility of being attacked by ransomwares.”

Previously, we have been utilizing email to contact the partners outside the office. At the same time, we integrated groupware for office communication. When communicating with the parters about renting or borrowing the cars they own , we emailed them with the accounts provided for each office.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

We were aware of the internet-related malware and threats such as ransomware that are widely reported these days. And, since we were receiving the vast amount of emails every day, we were fully aware of the fact that ransomware scenario could be happen to us as well. In fact, we have been actually receiving emails with the ransomware secretly attached as well as the malware mixed with the office communication. To reduce the risk of clicking such dangerous messages, we had to be really serious about the issue and find the solution to it as soon as possible.

_{(* Ransomware: a type of computer virus. It is also called “Ransom Virus” in Japan.) Once infected by the virus, the computer either automatically locked or files and data are encrypted, and eventually become unusable. In order to restore the data, the owner is asked to pay for “Ransom”.)}

Specifically, the sales offices have been collaborating with the staffs using emails and share a number of emails every day. Among those email contacts, most of them was held in-office. For this reason, our company started to look for another way to both reduce the number of emails shared and hedge against the unwanted malicious emails.

We can divide the office communication into two ways. One is brief and one-time communication, such as checking the situation of moving vehicles or finding the available vehicles. The other is important and needs to be saved, such as work alerts. We used emails for both types of communication. That means, we received more than 50 emails related to the issues about moving the vehicle.

How we communicate was that we share emails using the accounts given for each sales office, since there were sharable PC installed on each office. Important and work-related emails were often mixed with the emails regarding minor and brief issues. Due to this, we had to search out for the work-related emails when needed. Also, if the other staff check the work-related email first, the other staff, especially for those who needs to read the message, cannot find the email easily, since it is already mixed with all the unimportant emails.

Furthermore, in order to protect ourselves from ransomware, we have been prohibiting the part-time job workers from using the emails and even not letting them use the computer during the specific time frame. Downside of this decision was that work-related communication could not be well reached out to them, and eventually fail to send the right information to them. We have a number of part-time workers at the sales office. But, when they are out of office, we did not have a comfortable tool to continue communication with them.

To solve this, we brought up with an idea that if we change the email, the current office communication tool that takes about 90% of our entire communication, to the other collaboration tool, we could be more freed from ransomware. At the end of this thinking, we started to look out for the business chatting tools.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

Mr. Yamazaki :

One of the many reasons why we implement LINE WORKS as our new communication tool is that the application operation method was similar to that of LINE. Further, it is easy to be notified by the LINE WORKS notification, and PC version would also allow us to receive notifications on the PC. We further expected that LINE WORKS stickers would allow us to foster both quality and quantity of our communication. That is, when thinking about integrating another tool, we figured out that it could be better for us to have the collaboration tool that reinforces our communication more enjoyable and positive using the stickers provided.

How was your LINE WORKS introduction?

Mr. Yamazaki :

Our primary mission was to realign the damage prevention measure with regards to ransomware attacks. On that account, overall process, from decision making to actual introduction, only took 3 weeks to finish. Publishing a few pages of simple manuals on initial settings of LINE WORKS was enough.

 

As we are fully accustomed to email communication, I thought that changing the way of office communication used to held would evoke resistance feeling toward newly introduced tool. However, the rate of the inquiries received on the LINE WORKS usage was lower than we initially expected. After LINE WORKS integration, we monitored the volume of emails shared, and prohibited staffs from using emails for office communication purpose. Instead, we highly recommended the employees to use LINE WORKS.

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used?

Mr. Shimomura :

We are well utilizing LINE WORKS as a tool to share information and current status of the vehicles and offices located nearby in real-time. We also use LINE WORKS when does the vehicle returns to our office sooner than expected.

What are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Mr. Yamazaki :

After LINE WORKS introduction, the number of emails we received has reduced drastically. The number has reduced so much that we could even distinguish ransomware emails immediately these days. Establishing ransomware measures, what was our company-level of challenge, has also accomplished successfully. We are expecting to have feel the synergy effects from other field as well.

Mr. Shimomura :

“We can handle the customer inquiries faster and properly than before.”

With LINE WORKS, we gained an outstanding merit, which is an ability to immediately make responses to the inquiries received from other offices. It becomes easier for us to find out the availability of the vehicles located in other offices, and this helps us with estimating the arrival time of the vehicles once rented.

We are really thankful with the fact that we can solve the issues, without causing any difficulties to our clients. Along with that, we are also grateful for the increased number of customers using our service.

 

It is almost impossible to handle all the client inquiries with the available vehicles at the office. For this reason, it is natural for the sales offices to share vehicles with the other offices to fulfill the requests from the customers. However, there is no meaning of sharing if the office cannot provide immediate and proper answer to those clients who visited the office. With LINE WORKS, we can both send and receive responses to the inquiries shared between offices immediately. That is, the possibilities of our customers to leave the office with the faults that our company made has decreased. Specifically, the clients no longer have to suffer from the late countermeasure on their inquiries or worry about ruining their entire trip schedule by not having the suitable rental car options. What we found most intriguing was that LINE WORKS enables us to have flawless real-time communication.

Tell us specific use cases for LINE WORKS

Mr. Yamazaki :

We have been sending email for work-related contacts. Just by using Home feature, however, we are now enabled to send work notifications simultaneously to our entire employees. This definitely helps us to have better search and notification system.

 

We are also posting notices on maintenance information like regular inspections of the vehicles, list of newly introduced vehicles, monthly meeting schedules, recall guideline, customer survey results, and advice on the client reception.

How does the internal communication at your company changed after LINE WORKS integration?

Mr. Yamazaki :

Office communication has changed in a good way. Generally, communication can be more casually made than before. When using email, for example, we had to send ‘Thank you for your efforts’ when initiating conversation and send ‘I look forward to your cooperation’ at the end of the sentences. Unlike email-like communication, we can simply share messages using LINE WORKS messenger. That means, we no longer have to be overly formal on our office communication, and this definitely makes us all convenient.

 

Mr. Shimomura :

It has become easier for us to have interoffice communication. Added to this, the volume of the communication made not only with the other offices, but also with the staffs whom we have never contacted before increased after LINE WORKS integration.

How do you want to utilize LINE WORKS in the future?

Mr. Yamazaki :

We would love to utilize LINE WORKS Drive feature near in the future. Particularly, we would like to use Drive feature as a backup storage space for ransomware measures.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

What were the issues before the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Before LINE WORKS integration, we used to hold headquarters-store and inter-store communication using emails, phone calls, and fax. Of course, we did not have such thing as groupware. Each store has 1 to 3 public PCs. Since daily sales management is important for supermarkets, we required all the store managers to send daily sales condition on each store through cellphone email. When receiving lengthy emails, it was cumbersome to read them all through, scrolling the page to the bottom. Further, when asking store manager about the sales condition of other stores, we often failed to receive the response from them.

Because email is one-way communication tool, there was a lot of obstacles to counter back and we all felt that it was not effective enough.

For this reason, we started to look out for groupware and enterprise-level messengers for 2 years. We have went through several tools for their suitability, but we found that most of the tools are based on the PC version and some of the our employees could not even type down the words on the computer. With this, we were feeling that what we believed to be ‘understandable to use’ is not always ‘understandable’ to everyone. This brought us to consider further about implementing the collaboration tool if it were to require guide our employees.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

We thought about introducing LINE because we have been acknowledging that employees have already been using LINE as the office communication tool, and also, a lot of the employees felt burdensome utilizing the computers on their work. However, because LINE is a personal account, it was difficult to specify who the person is only with the account information. Also, we could not force the resigned employee to leave the chatting room. Furthermore, there were voice from the employees mentioning that they do not want to hear from other employees when they are off the work. This was understandable complaint since all the shift workers have different time schedules.

While struggling so, one of our IT partners introduced LINE WORKS to us. As LINE-like tool, there was no need to give extra education on its usage. Other than this, every account is manageable with the admin account, as well as device-friendly application enables us to send confidential information through devices. With those reasons above, we have decided to immediately introduce LINE WORKS.

How was your LINE WORKS introduction?

We first started with free trial version of LINE WORKS. We registered every employee at once and encouraged them to use the tool at the site. The registration process was not difficult at all because LINE WORKS allows batch registration using CSV file. We both used LINE and LINE WORKS together for about 2 weeks. At the end of this trial period, we came up with the conclusion that LINE WORKS is that we were looking for, and suits our needs. Finally, when the branch manager said ‘Let’s try with LINE WORKS’, we quitted LINE use and moved on to LINE WORKS.

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used? Also, what are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

We are currently using LINE WORKS for communication between headquarters and stores including butcher’s’, fish, and fruit stores, and inter-store communication, and contact with customers and shipping companies.

We can contact the person in charge of purchasing goods directly for any damage or accident.

Because it is our job to deal with the fresh goods, it is inevitable to have the goods either destroyed or damaged during shipping. In such case, we can deal with the problem in real-time just by taking photos of the goods right at the moment of import, and send it to the delivery manager. It has much easier for the employees to report such incidents much more conveniently with LINE WORKS.

Healthy rivalry has increased by sharing daily sales report PDF file through LINE WORKS.

The lengthy sales report, which had to be emailed by the phone once a day, was tabulated by store and shared in PDFs in the chat room. Until now, we didn’t even know who read the message because it was one-sided communication for the most of time. We think the biggest improvement is that we can now use ‘Read notification’ to find out who read it. In addition, it has become intuitive and easy to read, making it easier to compare the report to other stores. As a result, there seems to be a healthy rivalry created between the stores, leading to a sense of improving the sales of their stores.

With LINE connection features, we are sharing photos of the goods with our clients prior to the actual delivery.

With the functions connected to LINE, we are communicating with our clients as well. Although the product information to be received is basically written in the pre-emailed specification sheet, it is still difficult to determine only by the text alone because there are a lot of information that cannot easily be recognized.

After using LINE connection feature, however, we could directly receive photos of the goods the day before the actual delivery date. For example, information that had not been known until actually receive the goods like the color or the size of the apples, can now be known intuitively with LINE and LINE WORKS. Overall buying process has changed very efficiently.

Since we are actually feeling the changes made with LINE WORKS use, we are planning to broaden up the utilization field, such as use it to contact with the deliverymen.

What are the changes at the sites after integrating LINE WORKS?

Mr. Tsue :

We are utilizing LINE WORKS the most when contacting with the butcher department. LINE WORKS helps us to easily find out the information of other stores. For example, when holding an event, we decorate our store. And, as a part of our search for the helpful idea, we take the photos of other stores as reference.

In case of the meat product, the method of processing, selling, and price adjustment are not uniform.

So, for the most of time, the price is highly subject to the person who decides its price. In this case, it is often studied just by looking how other stores are dealing with the price. Also, we receive the daily sales report of other stores as an urgent message. In this case, we either promise to work harder, or ask the high-scored sales store manager for the tips.

Mr. Miyata :

Before LINE WORKS integration, it was mandatory for us to call back, even if we sent the email, whether to find out the communication partner have read the email or not. That means, we had to make contacts twice on one specific work. LINE WORKS, however, helps us a lot with the ‘Read notification’ by enabling us to check all the employees read the message.

For department taking in charge of side dishes, they have become much accurately managed the products with LINE WORKS by sharing photos of the product, related materials, and description stickers and more, when new product is introduced.

How do you want to utilize LINE WORKS in the future?

Mr. Otomo :

We are striving to convey information in more helpful and readable manner, because we are not achieving 100% on the read confirmation in messages such as sales reports and reminders from the headquarters. Also, our current information sharing is often initiated from the headquarters sending out the information to the stores or the employees. With LINE WORKS, we would like to structure a collaboration flow which we gladly receive suggestions from each store and share the idea together with the stores. Not only with the work-related communication, we would like to utilize LINE WORKS, as a tool directly related to our revenue, in sales perspective.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.

Work-related contact through LINE burdens employees on vacation

Prior to the implementation of LINE WORKS, if the headquarters or branch managers had to contact an employee or share information among workers, they communicated the necessary information via email or LINE. However, there was only one PC available for the public use in each store, and since employees were too busy to use the PC during the work hours(due to customer reception and skin care treatments), they naturally utilized LINE as their primary means of daily communication. This made employees on vacation not being able to rest and relax as much as they’d like during their time off work and even lead to psychological burden.

Thanks to the separation of “Work and Play”, employees are less stressed

The introduction of LINE WORKS enabled the separation of work(LINE WORKS) and personal life(LINE). Employee work schedule could be managed via calendar instead of contacting those who are on vacation. As a result, employees no longer needed to check work-related messages via LINE while on vacation, not being stressed and fully enjoying their days off work.

Familiar LINE interface encourages quick adjustment with no training

The crucial factor for choosing LINE WORKS was because of its identical user interface and environment to LINE. Common IT tools seem to be tailored to be convenient for “males” and “hard-working people”, but LINE WORKS naturally blended into everyday routines of all the employees. In fact, even the young workers, who are not familiar with a PC, were able to use it without additional training.

Real-time communication helps provide better service for customers

ANGELUX stated that its employees frequently share opinions and customer information(such as their conditions, effects of receiving treatment) in order to provide detailed service tailored to each customer. For example, discussing how the utilize cosmetics according to different treatment methods and customers’ conditions, had previously only been done through meetings, with time delays and lack of details. However, with LINE WORKS, those missed information could be shared in real-time with all employees, which subsequently led to an improvement of the quality of procedures.

Utilizing spare time before and after customer correspondence hours

Though it is difficult to use a PC during work hours, a mobile device can be easily utilized at times before and after customer care. Working with mobile devices has enabled not only real-time sharing of store information, but also checking important information quickly and effectively. For instance, employees use the Home function to post company policies and regulations and ideas from their experience. Also, because you can see whether or your posts or messages have been read or not, you can make sure to deliver what needs to be delivered.

Increased casual communication is the barometer for a friendly, energized company atmosphere

The core of a workplace, where connection among employees is important, is valued upon how well communication is conducted. ANGELUX values not only work-related interactions, but also other casual communication. Just like LINE where people had daily, ordinary conversations, LINE WORKS also supports stickers to help communicate casually and the right emotions. Also, the fact that the conversations are stored and kept on record, offered a sense of stability and safety. The company views the increase in such casual communication as clear evidence that the team atmosphere is being rejuvenated.

LINE WORKS sparks communication and work efficiency

Besides the message feature, it is equipped with multiple other useful features such as calendar, mail, home etc, all in a single application. Sharing calendar, assigning an email address per employee and many other benefits have become available. Moreover, order placements, customer requests, surveys that had been processed through fax, now can be done as simply as taking a photo and sharing it via chat or email. In general, there has been a significant impact on communication, work efficiency and unification among employees.

※ The details, affiliations and positions specified is the information gathered at the time of reporting.