Last month, Mark Kennedy, the “Real Gaijin”, had an interesting post titled "Even in Japan, the Customer is Not Always Right". It was about customer harassment and the measures some Japanese companies are taking to cope with it.
First of all, thanks for referencing my earlier post.
You have certainly provided a scholarly explanation of how Japanese people tend to deal with incidents of customer harassment.
While it is always a challenge to describe an entire country as having a reputation for poor customer service, for example, I have heard that certain non-English speaking countries are notorious for less than stellar after-sale service. It would, therefore, be interesting to see if similar results could be obtained from the following list of places with such a reputation:
France: Probably perceived as dismissive and possibly too direct.
Germany: Probably seen as too "by the book." There may be a similarity to Japan.
Russia: Probably considered as rude.
I could be way off on these perceptions, but a cultural comparison would be interesting to study.
I agree! Such studies probably have been done -- there's a lot of research on apologies. I tend to focus on Japan-related research but if find similar studies about other countries it would make for a good comparison.
An interesting case of different apology styles is the 2010 Toyota recall (for the "sticky accelerator pedal" issue).
CEO Akio Toyoda made the decision to speak in (not great) English at a press conference, saying "I'm a little bit worried (about the issue)" - an acceptable phrase in Japanese, but, to English-speakers, made it seem like he was *only slightly* concerned.
Yes, there was a lot about that press conference that didn't seem to work very well. He emphasized how he had always loved cars growing up, and probably meant it sincerely, but it seemed off topic and like a bid for sympathy rather a strong address of the problem at hand.
This is very intriguing! Recently a friend of mine in California was about to ship a custom made order to his client in Japan, but suddenly realized that his employee had forgotten to include the price of shipping, which was $2,500, not cheap. So the employee wrote a letter of apology to the Japanese client explaining that they had to charge this additional fee. The client was furious since the order was already behind schedule. Fortunately, I could act as a go between and help cool down the situation. From my experience in Japan, I told my friend that he had to cover the shipping costs himself or he would lose the Japanese customer, and probably a lot of other customers in Japan. He wasn’t happy at all but didn’t want to lose any customers. It’s quite a complicated situation, but I hope I saved it from exploding.
It’s good they had you as a go between! I was tangentially involved in a somewhat similar situation recently and I felt that the non Japanese side didn’t appreciate how it would impact the long term relationship.
This is how it appears in the questionnaire. The two scenarios are slightly different, but what the customer says is the same. I'll see if I can tweak it to make it a little more obvious what is intended. Thank you for pointing out that it can look like I've inadvertently repeated myself!
Wild. Wonder how this would go down in the US. No, wait, I don't.
First of all, thanks for referencing my earlier post.
You have certainly provided a scholarly explanation of how Japanese people tend to deal with incidents of customer harassment.
While it is always a challenge to describe an entire country as having a reputation for poor customer service, for example, I have heard that certain non-English speaking countries are notorious for less than stellar after-sale service. It would, therefore, be interesting to see if similar results could be obtained from the following list of places with such a reputation:
France: Probably perceived as dismissive and possibly too direct.
Germany: Probably seen as too "by the book." There may be a similarity to Japan.
Russia: Probably considered as rude.
I could be way off on these perceptions, but a cultural comparison would be interesting to study.
I agree! Such studies probably have been done -- there's a lot of research on apologies. I tend to focus on Japan-related research but if find similar studies about other countries it would make for a good comparison.
An interesting case of different apology styles is the 2010 Toyota recall (for the "sticky accelerator pedal" issue).
CEO Akio Toyoda made the decision to speak in (not great) English at a press conference, saying "I'm a little bit worried (about the issue)" - an acceptable phrase in Japanese, but, to English-speakers, made it seem like he was *only slightly* concerned.
Yes, there was a lot about that press conference that didn't seem to work very well. He emphasized how he had always loved cars growing up, and probably meant it sincerely, but it seemed off topic and like a bid for sympathy rather a strong address of the problem at hand.
This is very intriguing! Recently a friend of mine in California was about to ship a custom made order to his client in Japan, but suddenly realized that his employee had forgotten to include the price of shipping, which was $2,500, not cheap. So the employee wrote a letter of apology to the Japanese client explaining that they had to charge this additional fee. The client was furious since the order was already behind schedule. Fortunately, I could act as a go between and help cool down the situation. From my experience in Japan, I told my friend that he had to cover the shipping costs himself or he would lose the Japanese customer, and probably a lot of other customers in Japan. He wasn’t happy at all but didn’t want to lose any customers. It’s quite a complicated situation, but I hope I saved it from exploding.
It’s good they had you as a go between! I was tangentially involved in a somewhat similar situation recently and I felt that the non Japanese side didn’t appreciate how it would impact the long term relationship.
I think you have a repeated paragraph there Kate (the quotation and prompt "You say...")
This is how it appears in the questionnaire. The two scenarios are slightly different, but what the customer says is the same. I'll see if I can tweak it to make it a little more obvious what is intended. Thank you for pointing out that it can look like I've inadvertently repeated myself!