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.

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.