Episode #63: Admitting Wrong In Customer Service

Sometimes things go wrong. Mistakes are made, errors pop up, best laid plans are laid low. Stuff happens. How we deal with these incidents makes the big difference. Some societies are legalistic, litigious and phalanxes of lawyers are lined up telling us to deny everything. Japan isn’t one of those cases, so we expect a different way of doing things here, admitting that blame can be accepted, as long as it is handled appropriately.

Troublesome word “appropriately”. It is a bit like “common sense” which often proves to be very uncommon. What we may think is appropriate isn’t shared by others. This is where things get murky in the service sector world. When things go wrong what is the appropriate response by both parties? The aggrieved party can completely lose it and let go with both verbal barrels, tearing strips off the offending service provider.

Given nearly 30% of the Japanese population is over 65 these days, we can all look forward to various short fuse jichans or granddads exploding with rage, when some level of service is not delivered at the “appropriate” level. Those long Japanese life spans, combined with ever shortening tempers and easy irritation from others creates an explosive service sector cocktail.

A friend of mine was lamenting some poor service provision in the IT area. The project was 9 months late and when it did finally come on line it didn’t work properly at all. We all know that everything in IT takes longer than promised and always costs more than expected, but at least it is supposed to work. There can be many reasons for this. The brief may have been unclear, the execution could have been the problem, there may be extenuating circumstances, maybe it was basic incompetence?

When I was working at one of the retail banks here a very, very large amount of money had been carted out to sea and set on fire, in the form of a new internal operating platform not working well at all. It was launched then immediately scrapped. The autopsy of why it didn’t work, became one of those failure orphans, where there was no one responsible. No one lost their job and no lessons were learnt. It was like it never happened, as it was swept quietly under a rug and forgotten.

Anyway, back to my friend who was rather perplexed by the reaction of the IT service provider, who was not at all responsive. Magically, the perpetrator of this grief managed to switch the tables around and blame my friend for being the problem. Now this reaction is puzzling? Why would you take that path?

Not answering the plaintive emails, texts and phone calls gets aggrieved people worked up. They feel slighted and frustrated at the same time. So lesson number one is make yourself easy to reach out to the solve problems. Is your name there on your website to be contacted, if people have an issue with your service and they want to complain directly to the boss? Our Japanese staff are all ninjas at hiding trouble from the boss, so always expect to be the last to know what has occurred, until usually when it is absolutely too late.

Also don’t be mealy-mouthed about the problem. If you didn't deliver from the buyer’s point of view, then admit it, because the beauty or otherwise is in the eye of the beholder here. Perception is the key and that is to say the perception of the client. There is money involved obviously, but there is something much more valuable involved and that is trust. If you want to try and wriggle your way out of your responsibilities, as was the case on this occasion, then expect bigger ramifications down the road. My friend is very well connected and will not be speaking highly of the services of this provider to any and all who will listen. That will become an invisible cost line in the P&L ,where revenues are being negatively impacted by reputation damage. You cannot see it necessarily but you can be assured it will be there.

I am reminded of another case, where a very “sharp” businessman I know has quite a big following on the Internet. Various people who feel they have been duped, have created some scintillating reading on the internet, whenever you Google his name. When people are looking to do business with you, this type of prominent, smelly baggage will hurt you forever.

It is surprising how some people don’t take any responsibility for poor service. My son had a bowl of sauce spilt all over him at a ramen shop in the Azabu Juban recently. The waitress was Asian, not Japanese. To everyone’s astonishment she did nothing, just stood there looking quizzical, seemingly wondering to herself “now how did that happen?” No apology, no frantic provision of towels to soak up the sauce, absolutely nothing.

The Japanese manager was busy apologising, eventually providing the towels and wiping up the catastrophe. The guilty party just went back to grilling some meat like nothing had happened. Maybe she didn’t speak Japanese or English or was just stupid? Who knows what was going on inside her mind?

Luckily for her, it wasn’t some short tempered jichan she spilt the sauce over, as I am sure she would have been given a severe tongue lashing, the manager would have been given a good serve too and it would have turned into quite a public imbroglio. When departing, only the manager came outside to bow and apologise at the door. Where was the errant staff member, who should have been standing there looking contrite and sorry for the kerfuffle?

The point here is we all know that things will go wrong and yet how well have we trained our staff to take responsibility for their mistakes? This young woman had been given no guidance at all and yet here she is working in a retail food environment, where accidents are bound to happen. She may be part of that foreign, low pay, hourly “trainee” brigade that will increasingly be called upon to staff Japan’s restaurants, shops and retail outlets, but so what? They still need to be trained and prepared to work in one of the most demanding retail environments in the world, where standards are high and forgiveness is low.

This is a good time to take another look at what we are doing in our companies to prepare ourselves and our staff for mistakes, incidents, accidents, chaos and trouble. We can’t rely on people’s common sense or their capacity to take “appropriate” action. We need to tell them clearly the WHY of what we are doing. We need to explain our VALUES and we need to train them on how to respond to trouble, as viewed through the eyes of the aggrieved client. We also have to keep telling them because even though we may get sick of saying it, they need to hear it all the time for it to sink in.

No Warning Speaking

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue. One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event.

Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. A mental whiteout is probably fully underway and your face is going red, because of all the blood pressure of the moment.

Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. If you are a seasoned speaker, you could get up and wax lyrical for an hour without a problem. For everyone else, we are talking two to three minutes. Now two to three minutes seems rather short, except when you are suddenly thrust in front of a sea of expectant eyes of an audience.

Once upon a time, I completely forgot my next sentence and discovered the pain of prolonged time. I was asked to give a brief talk in Mandarin to a crowd of around a thousand people, when I was Consul General in Osaka. It was a special event for the departing Chinese Consul General Li, who was heading to New York. Actually, I was going okay but I paused to allow some applause to die down – this turned out to be a major error on my part.

I found when you go suddenly blank, a single microphone stand doesn’t provide much cover, up on a very big stage, with all the lights on you and everyone staring at you. That 30 seconds or so of silence, where I was totally lost and unable to recall what came next, seemed like a lifetime. So I know that two to three minutes can appear really daunting when suddenly called upon to speak.

Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context.

You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don’t have much preparation time up your sleeve.

Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events.

We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a long presentation.

We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage.

Let me give you a real life example. I was at an event for Ikebana International, sitting there calmly minding my own business, when I heard the speaker suddenly call me up to the stage to say a few words. I had the time from standing up to walk to the podium to compose myself about what on earth I would say. At the extreme that time gap was probably 10 seconds. I was going to need to speak in Japanese, so that just added another level of excitement to the challenge. It had been raining that day, so I miraculously dreamed up a water related analogy.

I began by thanking the host for allowing me to say a few words, although I secretly I wasn’t so happy about being put on the spot. I mentioned that the stems of the Australian cut flowers that were being exhibited that day, contained water and soil from Australia, as they had just arrived that morning by air. I said that as a result here in Japan we had a little bit of Australia present and each of these flowers were like a floral ambassador linking the two countries together. I then wished everyone all the best for the event and got out of the firing line pronto. Probably not an award winning talk, but good enough for that occasion, with that amount of notice. And that is the point. You need to be able to say something reasonable rather than remarkable to complete your sudden duties.

So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don’t just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case.

You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don’t you think.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

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About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.