Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.162 2025.04.01 Takahashi Minoru

The no-code sales pitch 'build systems easily' is a bait-and-switch argument

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


This is our first attempt at this, but we are publishing “Customer Voices” verbatim
with a few brief comments, in the hope that it will be helpful to everyone reading this column.
The main topic and intention are exactly as stated in the title.


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(Omitted)
Thank you so much for taking care of our Access needs on a daily basis.
It’s been a huge help that you respond immediately whenever things go wrong or errors occur, and we’re grateful that you take the time to explain things clearly to us, even though we aren’t very tech-savvy.


I’d especially like to thank you for advising us to “contact you via email rather than by phone or fax.”
At the time, we were contacting all our clients by phone or fax, so there was some internal grumbling, with people saying things like, “A phone call would be faster,” or “It’s a hassle to go through the trouble of typing out an email.”
After all, none of us were very familiar with using computers.
Although we were reluctant at first, we switched to email communication, and thanks to that, it had an unexpected positive effect.


First, for some reason, the number of inquiries we needed to make decreased year by year, and we were able to prevent problems from arising in the first place .
Our previous vendor had done an excellent job for many years, but we never experienced anything like this.
I’m not sure why, but perhaps it’s because writing an email forces us to mentally organize the situation ourselves.
It has also become much easier to share information internally about issues that arise and how to handle them.
Previously, we had to create documents and circulate them each time, but now we can simply forward emails.


Furthermore, this prompted us to gradually switch our communications with other business partners to email as well.
It was a struggle for everyone, including our business partners, to get used to it at first, but now we’ve gotten the hang of working with computers.
I believe this has become a wonderful habit that has transformed our company’s old ways of working.
I would be grateful if everyone at your company could read this email.
(Omitted)


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We believe that the essence of communication lies in “sharing” (information sharing).
In the business world, this “sharing” involves
how quickly, deeply, clearly, accurately, and without misunderstanding we can convey this to a large number of people (stakeholders)
—and we believe that this speed and diligence determine the difference between efficiency and inefficiency.


Receiving the email mentioned above has served as a wake-up call for us as well.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude once again.


Inspired by the email you sent,
we decided to conduct a cost comparison of our various operational tasks
and upon conducting a statistical survey of costs such as working hours,
The results are as follows.


(A) What is the average annual total cost per customer for those who primarily use telephone contact?
(B) Customers contacted via email, etc. (*) ~ Same as above
(Comparison of A and B) Average cost per A customer: 10; Average cost per B customer: 6
*Includes not only email but also the official LINE account (chat tool)


In recent years, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,
we have generally recommended communicating via email.
This was not based on any strict scientific evidence,
but rather a policy I implemented based on my intuition.
we now have some numerical data to back this up.
I feel that this represents a “sharing” of valuable data and insights
that we have successfully "shared" data and insights that are beneficial to all.


If your company has departments where communication is still primarily conducted via phone or fax,
you might want to consider
.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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