Editor: What was the impetus for you to develop such a system?
Yamada: This is a strong desire of Nakamura, our chairman. Nakamura launched the babysitter business based on her own experience of great hardship when she was a mother working with her own children. Therefore, he has a strong desire to constantly advance the world of childcare. As a result, we have accomplished many firsts in Japan, such as being the first nanny service in Japan to receive ISO 9001 certification and opening the first daycare center in Japan run by a stock company. As a part of this, we have started to make our service online.
To introduce "nannies that match the needs of families" as fast as possible.
Editor: What kind of difficulties did you face in development?
Yamada: In a nutshell, "automating the matching process" is not a straightforward task. For example, it is very difficult to express the "good match between a nanny and a family" using an index. Furthermore, there are still some areas that are not fully automated, including the nanny's schedule adjustment, so we are still working on ways to "improve the matching rate.
Editor: What do you mean by "matching rate"?
Yamada: "The percentage of nannies that the system was able to automatically introduce in response to a request. Although the Poppins system picks up the most suitable nannies and introduces them to customers, there are times when the system is unable to fully find a nanny. In such cases, the coordinator will search for a nanny and introduce her to the customer, rather than automatically.
Maruyama：Nannies are human beings, so even if the system mechanically asks, "How about this job? But when a staff member calls them and asks for a job, they often accept the request. In the future, I'd like to automate this part of the process. ......
The "Poppins System" was welcomed with open arms by parents of the "smartphone generation.
Editor: Can you tell us what your customers think of the Poppins system?
Yamada: First of all, as for the results of the satisfaction survey on Poppins Nanny, more than 95% of our customers answered that they were "satisfied" with our service last year. I think one of the reasons is that more and more young parents are using our web-based ordering system, but we also received feedback that it is very convenient.
