With a vision to improving better healthcare facilities, Olympus created the camera that lets medical professionals look inside the human body to help diagnose, treat and undertake therapeutical treatment to prevent life threatening diseases. The products have been instrumental in transforming lives over decades and now Olympus Medical set foot in India directly with a vision to support health care professionals through state of the art products and high standard after sales services.
This inspiring journey started on the October 12, 1919 as Takachicho Seisakusho by Takeshi Yamashita, initially specialising in microscopes and thermometers. Over the years, Takachicho Seisakusho transformed into a global Olympus Corporation by graduating into cameras, audio, medical, surgical, scientific and industrial equipment.
The Olympus journey in India has been quite interesting. Olympus Imaging India was established with the same direct, single-minded dedication geared towards innovative management and value creation through its high quality products. Olympus has always maintained the highest quality in all of its activities, namely production, service and customer satisfaction, a high quality that can only be attained through an attention to detail, which is also required in the products and services that satisfy the specific needs of customer in different regions. Olympus India now has 16 service sites spread across India which deliver the best services regardless of the location thanks to global ‘service quality evaluation’ standards. The same standards are being incorporated in India at all our service centers. The first years saw some challenges which were overcome owing to the rich experience of the team at the helm.
Way back in 2010, when Olympus started operations in India, the first challenge it faced was to make people believe that the same global standards of Olympus would be maintained in India. These global standards were Olympus’s major strength and banking heavily on these strengths a mass marketing campaign was initiated positioning Olympus as leader in innovation, technology and service. Other than the mass marketing campaigns, Olympus started reaching out to its consumers at all prominent medical conferences as well as arranged demos at all major medical institutions to give the customer hands on experience of the Olympus technology. Today, Olympus stores are already functional in Bangalore, Cochin, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, while several others are in the offing.
With the statistics of various illnesses varying from region to region, the demands also varied. Olympus imparted trainings at leading centres in India and has also been regularly imparting trainings to technicians and nurses on the usage of the technology in accordance with the varying demands.
One of the major challenges that Olympus faced initially was to make spare parts available at various service centres across India due to licensing and various compliance affairs. A multi pronged strategy was devised by providing brand new equipment as stand by loaners to support at the time when the equipments were down.
The second stage for Olympus was stabilising its operations in India. This was when a major production facility was severely damaged by the Tsunami in 2011 which dented the confidence and trust of the Olympus customer. Again a mass marketing campaign was initiated with a message that whatever the circumstances Olympus always stands by its customers.
Back to basics, Olympus now had to ensure that the global standards of customer satisfaction are met. In accordance with the global service standards and benchmarks set by Olympus Corporation, customer service centres were set-up at key locations across India, namely, Kolkata, Mumbai, Gurgaon and Chennai. Smaller customer service centres were also established in Ahmadabad, Bangalore, Cochin and Hyderabad.
All customer service centres are fully equipped with latest testing equipment and fully trained technical team to provide immediate and satisfactory resolution to complaints and queries of customers. Olympus made sure that customer complaints were attended in maximum of 24 to 48 hours time. To meet this uphill task new recruitment was done for technical staff and support staff. Japanese technical trainers were permanently stationed in India to provide there rich expertise to Olympus India.
To move closer to the customers and increase the reach further, Olympus stationed its resident engineers at Guwhati, Bhubaneshwar, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow, Bhopal and Coimbatore. The efforts put into the operations by each of the Olympus team member were remarkable and the results showed with lesser and lesser customer complaints.
Committed towards growth Olympus doubled its headcount since its inception and is gradually expanding its reach. Olympus’s long term vision and commitment towards innovation and improving lives, it plans to expand deeper into India, with the next cities in line being Vijaywada, Patna and Nagpur.
For more information, please refer to www.olympus.in