On 17 July 1899, Nippon Electric Company, Limited (renamed NEC Corporation, effective April, 1983, both expressed as NEC hereafter) Japan's first joint venture with foreign capital, was established by Kunihiko Iwadare in association with the U.S. firm Western Electric Company (presently Alcatel-Lucent).
The basic aim of the new company, expressed in the slogan “Better Products, Better Service,” was to carry out the promise to provide its customers with world-class products and dependable follow-up service. The notion of follow-up service didn't take root among Japanese businesses until a full half-century later, whereas NEC had from the beginning embraced a concept that developed into what we now call Customer Satisfaction (CS).
