Customers

Aiming to offer new excitement and a more fulfilling life for people all over the world

The Yamaha Motor Group's corporate mission is to be a "Kando creating company." With the aim of "offering new excitement and a more fulfilling life for people all over the world," we strive to use our ingenuity and passion to realize peoples' dreams and always be the ones they look up to for "the next Kando."

To this end, we listen sincerely to the voices of our customers in every step, from manufacturing processes including product planning, development, design, and production to sales and after-sales services, so that our customers will say, "I'll purchase a Yamaha again," or "My next purchase will be a Yamaha."

We continue to take on new challenges every day.

*Kando is a Japanese word for the simultaneous feelings of deep satisfaction and intense excitement that we experience when we encounter something of exceptional value.

Offering New Excitement

We will share some examples of our activities from the Moving You (Yamaha engineers smiles) page.

Vol. 16 There for That First Ride

Japan

January 15, 2020

We want the first encounter with motorcycles to bring the happiest of smiles, and we want the anticipation, tension and sense of accomplishment shared by children and their parents/guardians in that experience to be one they will always cherish.
Under a clear blue sky, the children face the first motorcycle they will ever ride.
The Yamaha instructor gives the more nervous-looking ones bright words of encouragement, and when they later happily shout, “I did it!” she flashes a big smile and raises her hand for a high five.
At each Parent-Child Motorcycle Class, you can hear her energetic voice reaching the ears of children ready for their first ride.

Vol. 15 Sharing Dreams

Australia

September 30, 2019

Children’s dreams know no bounds. Once they find something they can’t take their minds or eyes off of, somewhere they want to go or what they want to be, that genuine aspiration becomes what drives them as they grow and mature under the watchful and caring eyes of their parents.
Zane Burchell has his eyes fixed on one thing—going to the AMA in the United States to compete with some of the best dirt track racers in the world.
And one man from Yamaha Motor is the one working this field of dreams, nurturing the seeds of Yamaha Blue and helping them grow on dirt bike tracks across Australia.

Vol. 14 Hands Like His Father: Inheriting Skills and Spirit

Taiwan

December 25, 2018

At the biennial Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix, there was still a youthful look to the motorcycle mechanic representing Taiwan. This story is about a father and son who strove to be the best in the world at their profession, the respect and gratitude held by the young man for his father, and of their passion and pride as motorcycle mechanics.

Vol. 12 Quenching Thirst, Hand in Hand

Republic of Senegal

June 22, 2018

The Senegal River flows from headwaters in the Guinea Highlands and at each of ten villages scattered around the river’s watershed in northern Senegal, work is underway for installing new Yamaha Clean Water Supply Systems. Permanent access to the clean water the systems will provide means healthier, happier lives for everyone. If the water changes, lives will change. The water station is a gathering place for the villagers and is lively again today with laughter and conversation.

Vol. 6 Supporting lives and livelihoods of peoples of the Far North

Russian Federation

January 31, 2014

In the harsh natural environment of Russia’s northern regions, the peoples here continue to follow their traditional nomadic lifestyle of raising and herding reindeer. For these peoples, snowmobiles are necessities of life, and a recently opened Yamaha dealership in a city north of the Arctic Circle is now there to supply them. This is the story of a Yamaha man who came to the land of the northern peoples, with a respect for their native lifestyle and a desire to learn their ways and customs as he supplies the Yamaha products and service they want and need.

Vol. 2 Grow up strong and healthy! Fifty-two Miles of Adventure at Sea

Japan

October 18, 2012

Summer vacation's last training session for open-sea sailing. The children attending the yacht school at Hayama set off on a challenging adventure at sea, heading for the island of Oshima. Working together with their fellow sailors, the children went on to become stronger and stronger through their experiences in the natural environment out on the water.

Customer satisfaction regarding Yamaha Motorcycles

Figures are the percentage of customers in each year who purchased a major motorcycle model in the previous year and gave a customer satisfaction rating of 4 or higher on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) in sampling surveys. At Yamaha, we continue activities aimed at further increasing customer satisfaction through surveys like these.
(Countries covered: Japan, United States, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia)

* Held only in one ASEAN country in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Initiatives on Safety

Safety Vision: “Jin-Ki Kanno & Jin-Ki Anzen”

Jin-Ki Kanno & Jin-Ki Anzen expresses Yamaha Motor's unique mindset of aiming to create an accident-free society together with our customers by providing the joy and Kando that comes from users enjoying themselves while improving their abilities based on safety centered on “skills,” “technology” and “connectivity.” Jin-Ki Kanno means “The Seductive Exhilaration of Being One With the Machine” while Jin-Ki Anzen is the Company's belief that having people and machines work together in complementary ways can make more sophisticated safety skills and technologies possible.

In the Medium-Term Management Plan (2022-2024) announced in February 2022, Yamaha Motor made sustainability a new pillar of its corporate activities and is prioritizing several non-financial indicators to enhance social value. In aiming to create value in a new mobility society, "safer riding and users' peace of mind" is one of the banners under which Yamaha Motor is looking to connect with people and thrive as a company.

Safety Communication with Customers

We make every effort to prevent accidents by conveying relevant information using various communication channels. This includes explaining the correct way to use each product in its instruction manual, of course, and highlighting particularly important items by attaching warning labels to the products to indicate proper usage. Our dealers also communicate such information to the customers in person.

Should we become aware of a nonconformity product that may put our customers at risk, we immediately announce that information using every possible means and respond appropriately through our global system established for this purpose.

We pursue global activities to promote safety with the aim of reducing accidents, sharing accident information with the government agencies and international organs such as the United Nations mentioned above. The following is a list of some of our safety promotion activities.

Government-Industry Cooperation

To ensure the safety of our products, we adhere to safety standards as a matter of course and also work together with the governments and industry groups of each country in pursuit of the ideal in terms of safer products.

Major Affiliated Organizations

• International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association (IMMA)
• Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association（JAMA)
• Japan Marine Industry Association
• Japan Snowmobile Safety Association
• Specialty Vehicle Institute of America® (SVIA)
• Personal Watercraft Industry Association (PWIA)
• Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Association (ROHVA)
• Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI)
• Snowmobile Safety and Certification Committee (SSCC)
• Connected Motorcycle Consortium
• Car 2 Car Communication Consortium
• Safer Motorcycling Research Consortium

Initiatives on Quality

Approach to Quality

At Yamaha Motor, we always take a customer-oriented approach in our efforts to achieve safety and reliability through high-quality products and services, and to constantly provide peace of mind, confidence, and a sense of excitement to customers.

By high-quality products and services, we mean that our offerings fully reflect the quality demanded by customers, ensure safety, match their application, and have a service life of an appropriate length, in addition to being designed and manufactured to ensure they serve their functions continuously during use, and provide a high level of confidence, peace of mind, and excitement to the customers who use them.

Our factories in Japan and abroad are ISO 9001 certified and audited to ensure that all activities are carried out appropriately.

Quality Management System

We have established and implemented a quality management system based on ISO 9001 standards and our unique Groupwide quality policy declared by the President.

These global efforts are based on the three-year Medium-term Management Plan developed at the headquarters, with each Group company planning their activities and setting medium-term targets in line with this plan. The medium-term plan created by each business and its progress are reviewed at our annual business management review where issues are discussed to arrive at a solution, thereby running the PDCA cycle of our quality management system.

We also have a committee that monitors whether quality information is being processed appropriately in the market based on the product problem information and warranty repair information in each market. This committee ensures timely investigations and reporting to management.

Collecting and Responding to Market Information

We have a system in place to collect information about quality issues that arise in the market through dealers around the world and ensure the factory where the product was manufactured has access to the information. The information is delivered to the design and manufacturing divisions as well as the development and production departments of suppliers, so that coordinated efforts can be made to determine the cause and implement countermeasures, while handling the issue appropriately for the customers and developing measures to prevent recurrence.

We also have in place an escalation flow that ensures information quickly reaches management in the event of a product incident or a nonconformity product that may infringe on laws and regulations, as well as a system that enables deliberations, so that timely judgment and decisions can be made. When it is determined that market measures are necessary, we quickly notify the relevant authorities of the country where the incident or nonconformity product occurred according to its laws and regulations, then our dealers notify the users of the product that free repairs will be provided by direct mail, phone, announcement on the website, or other means.

Quality Improvement Training

We provide stratified quality improvement training each year to employees in manufacturing and quality management divisions to ensure they have ingrained, quality-related knowledge and skills. Employees in development divisions take various skill enhancement courses on methods for designing safe products, risk assessment, and other topics.

We also pursue various other efforts aimed at quality enhancement based on the knowledge and skills developed through training. One example is the "I am Yamaha" activities that we have been conducting globally since 2015. These activities encourage a strong sense of ownership in every employee, so that each individual believes, "It is I, and no one else, who is personally responsible for making the Yamaha brand shine." This attitude, along with a customer-oriented approach, allows employees to refine their powers of perception (ability to make discoveries) and to enhance the quality of not only products but also their work.

As part of these activities, we set up an exhibition space dubbed "Learning from Mistakes," where examples of past market quality problem are showcased with the aim of transferring past experience to future generations. This activity enables sharing of information between business divisions and with overseas manufacturing sites.

After-sales

Improving Service Quality through Dealership Staff Training

The Yamaha Motor Group considers providing services and parts through after-sales services to be a vital mission that allows our customers to thoroughly enjoy their lives and lifestyles through our products. We also want customers to become Yamaha fans through their experiences at points of contact.

With regard to service, we have adopted the slogan “One to One Service” for the active creation of positive relationships with each individual customer. In accordance with the slogan, we operate the Yamaha Technical Academy (YTA) program around the world to train service technicians as per our proprietary unified global standard.
Trainers in each country who have been trained in Japan hold classes that run for a certain period of time for the service staff in their country, so that they acquire technical skills that are up to Yamaha's unified global standard.

This program has three levels of accreditation–Bronze, Silver, and Gold–and we have standards for the employment of certified mechanics by dealers. By having Yamaha-accredited staff perform maintenance, we can continuously ensure the safety and reliability of Yamaha products for our customers.

We also operate a similar global training program called Yamaha Parts & Accessories Academy for staff who handle parts.

Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix

The Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix is one of our activities to deliver even greater customer satisfaction by enhancing the technical abilities used in daily work by service staff who have been trained at the YTA. The top finishers at regional preliminary rounds gather at our headquarters to compete in a contest to determine the world champions from the perspectives of “high level of technical skills,” “easy-to-understand explanations,” and “Kando response.” Service staff from around the world participate in this competition, and their motivation to be a top finisher is reflected in their daily service activities.

• News Release
• Details of the Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix

Customer-oriented Activities

We want customers to use our products with peace of mind for a long time. This makes a quick and stable supply of parts indispensable. To prevent shortages, we maintain a minimum of a 10-year supply of parts, and have built a system where customers can order parts online and have them delivered quickly.

For customer convenience, we also keep a parts list published on the website.

Use of Customer Information

The Yamaha Motor Group views opinions and requests from customers as expressions of their expectations for our products and services, so we carefully respond to each opinion and request we receive, in the belief that raising the level of customer satisfaction will lead to trust. Based on this spirit, we undertake various activities to know how customers evaluate and use our products, and to learn how to improve our products and what kinds of products to make in the future. For example, we send an Internet survey to customers who have purchased a new product, and in some cases, we may ask the customer in person for a more detailed evaluation.

Our Customer Communication Centers (CCCs) ^* set up at sales offices in Japan and abroad handle customer inquiries related to our products and services.

Comments received from customers are collected by YMC Service from service divisions, and reported to related departments and development and manufacturing sites, with instructions for improvement given as needed, as part of our efforts to develop and improve our products and enhance our services.

* The name differs from country to country, such as “Customer Relations.”

Public Relations and Advertising

Yamaha Motor always keeps in mind how our company, brand, and products are viewed or understood by consumers and society at large when conducting advertising or other corporate clear communication activities. In advertising our products, services, etc., the Company avoids using expressions that may lead customers to hold excessive expectations and strives to provide accurate information in an appropriate manner.