Episode #83: Customer Service When Doing Business In Japan

Japan is probably the leading country in the world for customer service. These are seriously picky, picky consumers here. If you are dealing with consumers then you had better have your quality act together. They will not tolerate poor quality. Their expectations are extremely high and they will complain vigorously if those standards are not being met.

It is often hard to understand. I grew up in Queensland in Australia and it is famous as a production center for tropical fruit, like mangoes. I planted and grew a mango tree in my yard and it produced beautiful mangoes. What you would pay for an entire box of mangoes is what you will pay here for one Miyazaki mango. But that Miyazaki mango will be perfect, absolutely perfect. No blemishes, no marks, perfect symmetry and the taste is sublime. That coming from a proud native Queenslander is high praise, I can assure you.

Now in Japan they will pay for quality and this is the difference. In the rest of the world people are more concerned with volume. In Australia, they would rather have the box at that price point, than the single perfect mango. So our concepts about what constitutes quality are fundamentally different.

Remember that most Japanese rent or own their very small apartment, so they can't actually acquire lots of stuff, because there is no place to put it. So you want to have the best of what you can afford, given the space limitations. And there are few parks or sporting facilities, so they have selected two major leisure activities - eating and shopping. They are well prepared to spend money on both. They are quality conscious and demanding as a result. So the consumer quality expectation transfers across to service provision as well. Service in hotels and restaurants must be conducted at a high level.

If you are in the B2B area, then there are so many layers of distribution that the relationship between the layers become very important. They don't hold a lot of stock each so the replenish part must be working well. Everything is “just in time”, like the Toyota system of car production. If you delay delivery then you are disrupting the whole system and everyone will complain vigorously up the food chain until it gets to you. You don't want that. The mutual dependencies here work because everyone understands the importance of quality and timeliness.

The level of quality provision is so high that the buyer expects to receive more than they are paying for. They expect to be getting advice, very fast follow-up, that you be available all the time to answer their questions, etc. So speed of reply to emails and phone calls become more important. In many countries if you send an email and you don't get answer until the next day or the one after, most people are okay with that. In Japan if they send an email to me in the morning and there is no reply, they are ringing me to find out the information. This is again that interconnectivity phenomenon. Everyone has promised something to someone else down the food chain. They have to keep reporting that everything is on track. In this regard Japanese buyers have an insatiable appetite for information and reporting.

Ironically when they come to make a decision, they take an age to get there. Things drag out interminably, nothing seems to be happening, time passes, we grow old and then suddenly the decision is reached and all hell breaks loose. Now everyone wants everything yesterday and they expect you to provide that level of service. We tend to be "less is more" in the West and Japan is "more is better".

They like to keep in touch to a degree we can’t imagine. For example, we get gifts for Oseibo at the end of the year, gifts for Ochugen during the middle of the year. They send me X'mas cards, new year cards, start of summer cards. They do this to keep in touch and remind you that they are there to serve you. I am expected to be doing the same to my buyers as well.

People will drop in unannounced without an appointment. One of my staff will come to me and say so and so is here to see you. I think to myself “did I forget an appointment”, so I check my diary and there is no appointment. They are just dropping by to say high and remind me that they are here to serve me. They expect this as well from me with my buyers. This is not how we do business in the West, so it is quite a different expectation here about what it means to have a business relationship. Japan sees Western business as "dry" and they prefer "wet". This is the contrast between efficiency and empathy in business. They are higher on the importance of EQ than they are on the IQ.

This is all very time demanding in a time poor world. But that is the expectation and you have to understand the point. You cannot over communicate with Japanese companies. Their tolerance for communication is very much higher than ours.

If you create a problem for the buyer you better get down there with a gift and a deep bow of apology. When you are trying to break into the market it is tough because you are fighting against all of these established relationships which have stood the test of time and which have demonstrated their reliability and trustworthiness. You turn up with your airy charm and a bunch of promises. If you screw it up, you are out sunshine. There are very few second chances in Japan for anyone - domestic or international. On the other hand once you get in and demonstrate you are reliable then, they tend to keep using you going forward.

How To Select Data For Presentations In Business In Japan

How much is enough data in a presentation? How much is too much? Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information. Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness. And you just can’t bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena. You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process. You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience.

Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them. They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another. The last one is killed by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being broken through, like a raging river spilling its banks. Are we self aware about what we are doing? No, we are caught up in data mania, where more is better. We can’t thow that graph out because it took a lot to create it. We need to have that extra bullet point, even though it is not adding any extra dimension to the presentation.

We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want. There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade. The majority of business presentations should be to persuade but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button. This is because the presenter hasn’t realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive. Data, data, data just doesn’t work though

At the end of the session the audience is shredded. They cannot remember any of the information because there was way too much. They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages. They walk out of there shaking their heads saying “what hit me?”. Was this a success? Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking? Did they leave with any valuable takeaways so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished?

So as presenters, we have to be like Mari Kondo with her housekeeping advice - keep only the bits we love and throw the rest out. We have to make some hard choices about what goes up on that screen and what remains relegated to the depths of the slide deck reserve bench. We have to winnow out the key messages and whittle them down to one central message. We need to take that key message and assemble a flotilla of support with evidence, proof, data, comment, etc., to support it.

We need a good structure to carry the presentation. A blockbuster opening to grab attention. A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted. Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A.

We have to keep the presentation itself short and snappy, rather than long and laborious. We want to leave them tonguing for more rather than leaving them feeling sated or saturated.

We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it. That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore. But this is often what we do, when we lead with data. Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby! You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic. We want to impress the audience not bury them under detail. Getting the balance is the presenters skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good. Plenty of room at the top folks, so come and join!

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

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

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.