Omotenashi: How Selfless Is Your Customer Service?

Stanley Marcus: Customers are people; consumers are statistics.1

Five years ago, on a trip overseas, I was struck by the difference in attitude between airport security in Japan and the US.

In Japan, the conveyor belts had a curved design that took up little space and returned the bins automatically. There were only a few employees. And all the employees helped the travelers get through security as pain-free as possible.

In the US, it was totally different. There was a new and confusing conveyor belt system that kept backing up. There were more employees at each scanner than I wanted to count. And the TSA employee kept talking dismissively to customers who didn’t understand what they should do.

Like all customer service experiences, the difference between these two comes down to culture — the culture of the society or the organization.

In the US, companies often treat customers as statistics to gain from rather than as people to be given to.

In Japan, customer service embodies the spirit of omotenashi: service is supposed to be given wholeheartedly, without expecting anything in return, and without putting on a fake attitude.

Service in Japan centers around care rather than expectations. Any task that makes a guest feel better, no matter how menial, is important.

Anticipating a customer’s unique needs in a way that feels natural is considered the height of omotenashi.

At Ippudo — a ramen restaurant with locations in the US, France, the UK, Australia, and throughout Asia — staff get served as customers during their training period to understand service better and also to see what types of mistakes can happen from a customer’s point of view.2

And, every time a person enters the restaurant, the staff shouts an energetic “irasshaimase” — come in — to welcome guests and set the tone for the dining experience.

Contrast this to many restaurants in the US — even high-end restaurants — where you’re unlikely to get a hello or a goodbye. And where servers are trained to get more out of their guests by upselling them instead of being trained on what it takes to make the guests have the best experience.

Service should be about the customers, not about you.

Is your customer-service training helping your employees best serve your customers, or is its main focus on increasing your bottom line?

How can you help your employees focus on satisfying customers and their unspoken needs better than anyone else?

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References

1. Stanley Marcus, Quest For The Best, 1979.
2. Yuzuha Oka, “Japan firms face hurdles as ‘service’ culture taken overseas,” The Japan Times, 2015.

This article was originally published on Medium.

Note: I earn a small affiliate commission through any of the books purchased through the links in the references.