Masaru Saito, Representative Director and CEO of e-s2mile
- Born and raised in Tokyo.
- After graduating from university, studied Arabic and worked at the Embassy of Japan in Bahrain under Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan.
- Upon returning to Japan, studied CRM business at a private company, gaining a wide variety of experience in domestic and international management methods. Honed skills as a consultant.
- Passions include mountaineering, soccer, bossa nova, wine and travel.
- Future Dream is to be a “Perpetual Traveler”
- Favorite Quotes:
- “Get one and let one go”
- “Question the status quo”
- “Let go of want and your cup runneth over”
- “Never give up”
■ Skill domain
- CRM business consulting (strategy, operation, IT, outsourcing)
- Project management
■ Areas of expertise
- For companies, Masaru Saito has the skills to provide unparalleled consulting in the following areas: planning from CRM strategy to contact center operation; business design and structuring; business launching; operational structure; human resource training; IT introduction; quality management; efficiency and its evaluation methods; advice on ideal operational models, as well as other areas.
- As a customer partner, he serves as a bridge between corporate management and operational staff by considering all angles and perspectives from an objective standpoint; launching contact centers in an effective and efficient manner; and helping customers navigate a broad range of operations and evaluations. He also diligently represents his client company’s standpoint in selecting and evaluating optimal solutions and partners.
- His consulting skills background includes experience in relevant departments such as business operations and system departments. Specializing in support for upstream to midstream corporate CRM strategies, he deploys activities that contribute to boosting customer satisfaction as well as sales and profit for client companies.
■ Skills and experience
He brings experience in planning and operating contact centers, and is able to provide consulting services for the following operations:
- Establishing contact center operations
- –Defining work requirements
- –Work design
- –Operational structure design
- –Operational design
- –Defining human resource requirements
- –Selection and evaluation of partners
- RFI/RFP process support
- Location evaluation and selection
- Contact center re-engineering
- –From As-Is analysis to To-Be proposal
- –From suggestions for improvement to their implementation
- Training support for contact center personnel
- Benchmark survey support
- Evaluation of IT solutions
- Project management
■ Personality
- Outstanding communication and relationship-building skills enable him to establish good relationships with people at all levels including customers and company staff of any department.
- He has the ability to accurately understand and analyze customer issues, solve problems and offer effective recommendations.
- He is able to provide guidance to customers as well as company staff if necessary, and is natural in a central role.
- He is self-motivated and possesses the kind of positive thinking that allows him to create his own methodologies.
- He is able to design business operations with a big-picture view of contact channels, and the ability to counsel with expert knowledge in global trends.
■ Strong points
- He has an established reputation concerning contact center operations and systems knowledge. With his unique positioning (experience in all departments required in CRM), he provides that kind of consulting that connects corporate management and field staff (not simply academic theory), thereby leading to beneficial partnerships with customers.
- With the ability to leverage in-house resources including operations and systems departments and smoothly facilitate collaboration, he is able to not only envision expansion scenarios for the business and put them into practice, but also promote sustainable relationships with customers.
- Driven by a uniquely positioned concept based on objectivity―which sets him apart from industry consulting firms, IT vendors, outsourcing partners, etc.―he is committed to achieving results and deploying unique concepts that are easy for client companies to understand. He also excels at business development activities that include the creation of new services and methodologies.
■ Reference data
- Representative Director for NPO corporation Contact Center Omotenashi Consortium
- Councilor for ‘Information Security Ethics Committee’, Call Center Association of Japan (CCAJ)
- Author of ‘Call Center White Paper 2004/2007’
- Multiple-contributing author to monthly publications ‘Call Center Japan’ and ‘I.M. Press’
- Keynote Lecturer for ‘CallCenter/CRM Demo & Conference’ 2008 to 2012
- Member of judging panel for ‘Contact Center Awards’ 2009/2010/2011/2012/2013
- Author of ‘IT Technology Map’ 2015–2024/2016–2025/2017–2026/2018–2027, contact center category, published by Nikkei Business Publications
