Miwako Tobe won the "Service Skills Competition" in-house contest where contact center personnel compete using their telephone support and problem-solving skills. In this profile, we introduce the story of how she has used her hospitality skills and specialized knowledge, backed by such excellent results, to find success as a driving force for contact centers and BPO* services, both highly important to Hitachi Systems.
Miwako Tobe
Mother Frontline Center East 2nd Group
Business Support Operations Department 1
BPO System Operation Office
Contact Center and BPO Services Division
Business Cloud Services Group
Miwako Tobe started at Hitachi Systems in 2006. She initially worked in a contact center department providing technical support for system engineers (SE). She was highly praised by customers for her rapid and accurate support based on specialized knowledge. Following this, she was made responsible for operations of the end-user IT help desk where she honed her communication and hospitality skills, leading to her winning an in-house contest in 2019. In recent years, she has performed a wide range of work including as an instructor providing system introduction training, coordinating operators, call center startup, and BPO services, making her an active presence as a driving force behind Hitachi Systems' contact centers and BPO services.
These are the words of Miwako Tobe, a specialist engaged in contact center work for more than 10 years since starting at Hitachi Systems. Tobe, who has IT-related knowledge from her university days, was first assigned to technical support after entering the company. Technical support in response to inquiries from SEs requires the ability to investigate technically advanced inquiries, such as identifying error causes, and provide a proper response. Contact center personnel must act rapidly and accurately, even to inquiries related to problems such as server down. Even while handling numerous inquiries, Tobe was able to accumulate knowledge by investigating and gathering information in her free time. Based on this knowledge, she was not only able to provide replies but developed a thorough approach allowing her to anticipate answers from the related information she had already obtained. She was highly praised by customers for such performance. Even though she has taken childbirth/childcare leave twice, separating her from the workplace for three years, she has been able to build a solid career combining child-raising and work thanks to various forms of surrounding support including work/life balance support measures such as the short-term work system.
Tobe providing technical support
Tobe then reached a career turning point. She moved from SE technical support to the IT help desk for end users. This assignment required communication and hospitality skills more than the "speediness and accuracy" that is important for technical support. Although it was difficult at first for her to bridge the gap to acquiring these skills that were different from technical support, Tobe was able to identify the understanding level of persons making inquiries just from talking with them and used her knowledge accumulated through technical support work to provide easy to understand problem-solving measures using simple language, explanations following the procedures while performing the required operations together, and other thorough approaches to provide explanations that match the customer's technical skills. She was highly praised by customers after handling their inquiries with thankful comments such as, "I really didn't think she would do so much for us", giving Tobe a strong feeling of job satisfaction from working at the IT help desk. This also spurred her to take on the challenge of entering the in-house contest testing telephone support and problem-solving skills. Tobe was highly lauded for "providing professional response with a bright and easy to hear voice combined with great communication abilities", resulting in her successfully wining the contest.
Competing in the in-house contest
Winner's trophy
Tobe, who has combined hospitality and specialized knowledge, is further expanding her range of activities. One way she has done this is by functioning as an instructor for implementation training such as that for system replacement. With her ample hospitality skills, Tobe's lectures are well enjoyed as she is able to answer technical questions on the spot. Afterwards, due to the large amount of cases Tobe was responsible for in addition to IT help desk work, she fed back inquiries of the day and other important points she noticed into the FAQ to improve the quality of support services. Moreover, this experience would connect with her next work assignment. Tobe has become responsible for coordinating operators performing IT help desk work and providing technical guidance, resulting in fully utilizing her capabilities by being involved in starting up new contact centers, establishing operating rules, and similar important tasks.
With her desire to "continuously gain various types of work experience while assisting in resolving customers' concerns", Tobe is increasingly expanding her range of work activities while constantly taking on new work. Her initiative to take on new challenges, flexibility, and capabilities to achieve results have gained her great respect within the company and she is often called upon when starting up new services. In addition to IT help desk work, Tobe was recently made responsible for BPO services in which related work tasks are outsourced. Her presence is extremely important for Hitachi Systems as we seek to provide value-added services with a focus on contact centers.
Tobe is currently using her hospitality and specialized knowledge for starting up and establishing operating rules for IT help desks for customer companies. In order to contract with customer companies about IT help desk work that are the responsibility of information systems departments and ancillary work related to systems (such as ID issuance, changing passwords, terminal management, contract-related work) as BPO services, she also participates in interview meetings for defining their requirements with customer companies. Tobe functions to help reduce the work load and improve the productivity of our customers.
Hitachi Systems is focused on strengthening our high value-added services that combine quality control based on global standards, shown by our acquiring COPC certification (global standard that objectively evaluates performance, and operation and management methods of contact center operations) for 16 consecutive years and similar achievements, with our leading-edge digital technology. Tobe is contributing to our company by sharing issues and improvement measures with operators and improving our support quality based on her own knowledge and ample achievements in providing support, as well as the awareness gained from the "Service Skills Competitions".
Tobe has become an employee role model due to her balancing childbirth/childcare and work while continually improving her own skills thanks to company work/life balance support measures, and the understanding and support or workplace colleagues and superiors.
She plans to even further expand her range of work while providing advice and support to the younger generation of workers.
With her family (Personal photo)
（The article is as of October 29, 2021）
Information contained in the articles are as of the date of publication, but may be subject to change without prior notice.
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