Tag: Asia

China Post Group approved to set up life insurance unit

Posted by | Aug 9, 2007 | |

China Post Group, a 10 bln-usd company formed out of the State Postal Bureau, said it has won regulatory approval to set up a life insurance unit.

In a recruitment advertisement published on the Renmin University of China website, the company said it received the approval from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) in June.

However, the CIRC declined to provide comment when contacted by XFN-Asia.

China Post can operate its insurance business through the country’s comprehensive postal network.

The group already has a 50-50 insurance joint venture, Sino-French Life Insurance Co Ltd, with France’s CNP Assurances.

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DHL awarded industry accolade for best customer support

Posted by | Aug 8, 2007 | |

DHL has been awarded the Japan Institute of Information Technology’s (JIIT) highest award — ‘Best Customer Support of The Year 2007’ — in recognition of its contact center initiatives that enable the customer service unit to achieve productivity and quality targets, while cementing its role as a profit center.

JIIT established its ‘Best Customer Support of The Year’ award in May 1998 to promote improved productivity and more effective management systems within customer support units in public and private enterprises. Award applications are submitted every April for screening by JIIT staff members, who follow up with visits to applicants’ contact centers. Award winners are announced in August. This year, JIIT honored contact centers at DHL Japan and three other firms for outstanding contributions to their companies’ operations.

DHL Japan has in place strict Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each of its contact centers. These KPIs include answering at least 90 pct of all calls within 10 seconds, and maintaining a hang up rate — the percentage of all incoming calls abandoned by the caller before communication with an agent is established — of no greater than 0.1% of all incoming calls that ring for more than 15 seconds.

Assessment of contact center performance is based on inspections conducted by a team of internal quality control staff and a mystery caller program undertaken by an outside organization.

DHL Japan also emphasizes the quality of its agent responses, and believes that the 2007 JIIT award validates recent efforts to reinforce training of in-house staff and incentive program improvements that allow contact center agents to proactively propose services to customers — changes that have facilitated KPI achievement and raised profitability.

The results speak for themselves: sales of Time Definite Delivery (TDD) value-added services deriving from requests for pickup have risen significantly, with profit doubling in fiscal 2005 and nearly quadrupling in fiscal 2006, both relative to fiscal 2004, when contact center initiatives had yet to be implemented. DHL Japan has successfully positioned its contact centers as highly-profitable units within the company.

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Kintetsu Express considers shipping tie with Nippon Express

Posted by | Aug 6, 2007 | |

Nippon Express Co. and Kintetsu World Express Inc. said Tuesday they are studying joint air transport services from Japan to other Asian countries to take advantage of growing demand for shipping services within Asia.

The two Japanese firms are in talks to develop a small package shipping service that would deliver items such as samples and documents.

Japanese transport companies have lagged behind their U.S. and European competitors such as DHL and FedEx Corp.

Kintetsu World, for instance, provides shipping services to other Asian countries from Japan but focuses mostly on large shipping contracts such as delivering electronic parts, a Kintetsu World spokeswoman said.

Growth in demand for commercial shipping within Asia has been growing at 7 pct to 8 pct a year, Nippon Express and Kintetsu said in a joint press release.

The Nikkei reported that the two firms and Japan Airlines Corp. are expected to form a tie-up in international package shipments from Japan to other parts of Asia.

But the Kintetsu World spokeswoman denied the report, saying that the two transport firms haven’t decided which airline they may want to use for their potential new service. JAL wasn’t immediately available to comment on whether the airline is involved in talks with the two transport firms.

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South Korean postal service plans to increase stock investment next year

Posted by | Aug 3, 2007 | |

Korea Post, South Korea’s postal service agency, said Friday it plans to raise its purchase of stocks by as much as threefold next year as it moves to have the law on the agency’s investment ceiling on stocks revised.

If revised, Korea Post, considered the country’s second-largest institutional investor after the National Pension Corp., will increase its stock investment to as much as 6 trillion won (USD 6.5 billion) in 2008 from the current investment of about 1.8 trillion won, the agency said.

Korea Post, which manages about 60 trillion won in postal bank deposits and insurance, is banned from investing more than 5 percent of its bank assets and 20 percent of its insurance assets in stocks.

South Korea’s main stock market index has soared more than 40 percent so far this year, and briefly passed the 2,000-point milestone last week.

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