Initiative Towards Customer Satisfaction

In recent years, capital investment has been accelerating in semiconductor-related markets, driven by factors such as the advancement and sales of smartphones, progress in automobile electrification, and investments related to data centers. There has also been a marked evolution in semiconductor technology to correspond to digital innovations, primarily including IoT, cutting-edge driver assistance systems, and AI. Advantest places the foremost priority on proactive, speedy provision of products and services to respond to these market changes and the development of competitive next-generation technologies.

Basic Policy for Improving Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is the most fundamental principle underpinning Advantest's business.

Sales and Marketing Practices to Ensure Higher Customer Satisfaction

Advantest prioritizes the important challenge of proactively providing products and services quickly in order to respond to market fluctuations and technological evolution. As one measure responding to this issue, we integrated our business units’ marketing into our sales headquarters in December 2016 before integrating system solutions in June 2017. By integrating sales with marketing, more efficient product development and delivery to customers has become possible due to accurate, timely understanding of market and customer needs, which are collected directly by the sales units for sharing with the marketing units. These are in turn then provided as feedback to business divisions. Integration of system solutions has also led to more robust technical support for customers.

The sales and marketing units within the sales headquarters were integrated in March 2020.
We aim to further improve customer satisfaction by taking measures in accordance with these changes.

Sales and Marketing Activities to Improve Customer Satisfaction

Not only do we provide test solutions, but also demonstrate leadership within the industry by organizing events to share the latest technology and product information with our customers, and continuously communicate information related to technology and markets so as to stay committed in supporting our customers' technical innovations. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were forced to hold our conventional face-to-face exhibitions and customer events online. While taking vigilant measures to prevent the spread of infection under these circumstances, we held the VOICE 2022 Advantest Developer Conference, a long-awaited face-to-face event, in Scottsdale, Arizona, in May 2022. VOICE is run by a committee made up of Advantest and voluntary customers, serving as an international community where users and strategic partners related to our product portfolio (V93000, T2000 SoC test platform, memory tester, handler, test cell solution, etc.) gather and grow together. The conference is also a place for participants to deepen their insights and build lasting relationships by discussing the efficiency and productivity of semiconductor testing and learning about the latest technology trends and applications. We will continue to keep pace with the "new normal" while globally expanding our activities to enhance communications based on our customer support improvement initiative.

Promoting Customer Support

The Advantest Group has established its basic policy for customer support with the aim of realizing the globally-oriented restructuring of the Group's service businesses.
Our basic policy is outlined as follows.

Basic policy for customer support

• We will propose total solutions in the form of support packages designed to deliver maximum efficiency to our customers in their device measurement operations.
• We will propose unified service support matching the customer's business model from development to the mass production environment.
• We will respond to customer demands by proposing service support packages that encompass total solutions.
• We will always take the customer's point of view and draw on our global organization in offering solutions.
• Our premium services and customer support will not only be efficient, but will also take the environment and safety into consideration.
• We will offer high-value-added professional services.
• We will strive to maintain our zero-accident record by thoroughly observing safety standards in field service provision and elsewhere.

Better Customer Support with a Global Focus

Advantest is building a global support framework capable of responding effectively to service support requests and other inquiries from customers. While responding to everyday service support requests through contact centers in each country, as well as by telephone and e-mail, we are also implementing primary support consisting of technical service and onsite repairs by field engineers.

We place expert support teams in product development bases to carry out secondary support, allowing us to respond appropriately based on the content and difficulty of service requests.

We have developed a global supply-chain network covering customer operations ranging from their development bases to mass production facilities. Moreover, we also operate a supply-chain control mechanism through which replacement equipment and parts at service centers in each country are monitored to determine inventory needs at respective locations worldwide.

We continue to run an engineer exchange program between overseas subsidiaries and our secondary support division, which helps engineers improve their professional skills and raises the quality of our support. This two- to three-year program aims to sharpen engineers' technical skills, develop cross-cultural competencies, and raise foreign language and communication proficiencies. In the mass production facilities of customers, we offer on-request expert consulting and solutions regarding productivity issues. We also offer device measurement training to our customers, and provide professional advice in that regard.

Strengthening the Recycling and Remarketing Businesses

Advantest Finance Inc. (AFI) changed its name to Advantest Pre-Owned Solutions Co., Ltd. (APO) in January 2022. Therewith, the company marked its transition from its leasing/rental business and sale of pre-owned (used) Advantest equipment to one which focuses on business including after-sale services as a part of the Field Service BU (FS BU). This has enabled us not only to respond to long delivery times for new products but also to propose and provide purchase/resale services as a complete solution. Despite recycling being a domestic Japan-only solution, we will continue to consider its global applications and expand our activities.

Advantest will contribute to our customer’s test capacity management together with FS BU. One stop shopping, quick upgrade and End-to-End test cell integration expert support will be provided for all Advantest products.

*Remarketing business: Business that puts second-hand goods back on the market ("remarket")

• Product Recycling