Ejovi Nuwere

Usually when I visit Japan I try to limit my stays to less than a month. If I stay less then a month then I get to experience all of the great things about the country without being reminded of what I dislike about it. I’ve reached the point of being reminded of the few things that upset me about Japan. Like the fact that employees only follow rules. Which is OK most of the time except for when it comes to customer service.

Japanese customer service is great if you don’t ask for something not specificly defined in the rule book somewhere. First they go to a supervisor and then the supervisor might go up another level to his supervisor and then the word eventually comes down from the top, “No we can’t do that, sorry.”

Great customer services comes from employee empowerment. When employees understand what great service means. When employees understand how important it is to make a customer happy. The best service company doesn’t have rules for what is and isn’t allowed to be given to customers, instead they have rules for what the company hopes the customer does and doesn’t take away from their experience with the company.

When the rules are based on how the customer should feel when they walk away and the lowest level employee understands this and is given freedom to make decisions within this framework then you have great service. This is missing from many Japanese companies, especially old companies and government run businesses like Japan Railway.

I’ve been here a little more than two months and I’m ready for home…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 8:59 am and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.