Canon's 17-Year Reign in Customer Service: A Blueprint for Excellence

MELVILLE, NY – December 29, 2025 – For the 17th consecutive year, Canon U.S.A., Inc. has secured the prestigious Center of Excellence certification from BenchmarkPortal, a distinction that places its customer contact operations in the top ten percent worldwide. This sustained achievement highlights a long-term strategic focus on customer support as a core pillar of its business, setting a high bar in the competitive digital imaging industry.

The award specifically recognizes the performance of Canon’s Customer Solutions Center, which has consistently demonstrated superior results in a rigorous, data-driven audit. This milestone is a rare feat in the fast-evolving world of customer experience, where consumer expectations and technological demands are in constant flux.

“We are honored to receive BenchmarkPortal’s Center of Excellence certification for the 17th year in a row,” said Kiyoshi Oka, executive vice president and general manager, Marketing Strategy Unit, Canon U.S.A., Inc. “This achievement is a testament to the dedication of our Customer Solutions Center team, whose passion and professionalism continue to elevate the customer experience. Canon remains committed to empowering our customers and partners through reliable support and innovative service.”

The Anatomy of Sustained Excellence

Achieving this certification once is a challenge; maintaining it for nearly two decades points to a deeply embedded corporate culture of operational excellence. The BenchmarkPortal evaluation is not based on arbitrary checklists but on a stringent, metrics-based analysis. Contact centers are audited against a “Balanced Scorecard” of 41 key performance indicators (KPIs) drawn from BenchmarkPortal's massive global database.

These metrics are divided into two primary categories: efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency KPIs, such as cost per call, average talk time, and agent utilization, measure the operational leanness of the center. Effectiveness KPIs, including First Call Resolution, customer satisfaction scores, and agent satisfaction, gauge the quality and impact of the service delivered. To be certified, a center must rank in the top ten percent of its industry peers across this comprehensive scorecard.

“Achieving the Center of Excellence award again this year represents an extraordinary achievement that shows Canon's consistent, high-level commitment to delivering exceptional customer service,” noted Bruce Belfiore, CEO of BenchmarkPortal, who praised the company's long-standing dedication to best practices.

This consistent performance suggests a robust system of continuous improvement, where processes are not only established but are perpetually refined to meet evolving standards. It requires significant investment in training, technology, and process management to prevent the performance degradation that can affect many large-scale service operations over time.

A Strategic Differentiator in a Crowded Market

In the technology sector, where product features can often be quickly matched by competitors, customer service emerges as a powerful and durable competitive advantage. For Canon, this 17-year record of elite support is more than just an accolade; it is a strategic asset. Superior service is a direct driver of customer loyalty and retention, which is significantly more cost-effective than customer acquisition. Studies have shown that even a small increase in customer retention can lead to a substantial rise in profitability, as loyal customers tend to spend more over their lifetime and are less sensitive to price fluctuations.

This award recognizes the company’s Customer Solutions Center, which handles complex B2B and enterprise-level support for its wide array of digital imaging solutions. This strategic focus on high-value client support may explain the distinction between this operational award and the mixed public reviews often seen for consumer-grade electronics across the entire industry. By creating a world-class support structure for its business partners and enterprise clients, Canon builds deep, lasting relationships that foster loyalty beyond a single product transaction. This focus on the post-sale experience helps solidify its market position and enhances its brand reputation as a reliable, long-term partner.

Inside the Blueprint: Technology and Centralization

A key part of Canon’s success story can be traced to concrete investments in its support infrastructure. In 2017, the company unveiled a state-of-the-art Customer Solutions Center in Melville, New York, centralizing its technical support, engineering, and development teams into a single, collaborative hub. This facility was designed to be more than just a call center; it’s an environment built for complex problem-solving.

The center features built-in sets that replicate major client equipment configurations, allowing engineers to reproduce a customer's exact environment for effective troubleshooting. This integration of engineering and support teams enables a faster, more effective response to complex issues involving software, hardware, and integrated network solutions. It represents a shift from reactive support to proactive solution engineering.

Furthermore, Canon has evolved with broader industry trends by investing in service automation and self-service tools. This includes providing partners with extensive knowledge-based articles and collaborative online platforms where they can find answers to common issues without needing to contact a support agent. This omnichannel approach, blending human expertise with digital efficiency, allows the Customer Solutions Center to focus its highly skilled agents on the most complex and critical customer needs.

This model aligns with the evolution of modern customer support, which increasingly leverages AI and automation to handle routine inquiries, freeing human agents to act as expert consultants. By embracing these cutting-edge technologies and service models, Canon has not only maintained its high standards but has also built a scalable and future-proof support ecosystem that continues to set an industry benchmark.