Customer Service in Japan

[Doug M]

I have my own theories but would like to pose the question - Why is it that customer service is taken so seriously in Japan? How is it that low paying jobs are still filled by employees who dedicate themselves to the task at hand?

I think many Japanese would ask - Is there another way?

Or, am I wrong? Is customer service in Japan adopting a more "it's just a job" attitude?

[deadhippo]

I can't tell whether the quality of customer service is changing or not but I think the original reason for such "good" service is that the merchant class was one of the lowest in Japan and therefore people looked down on them.

Personally I think the customer service sucks in Japan. It is just a facade. A smile and a welcome to the store are not what I call customer sevice though. To elaborate on why I think the customer service is not good here I will give a few examples.

A friend of mine bought a Gucci mobile phone wallet from a famous department store and it broke a few weeks later. She had to pay 4000 yen to have it repaired when the origianl price was only 6000. In Ireland it would be repaired for free or replaced.

At the beginning of this year more than a month after paying for my tickets to NZ at one of Japan's biggest travel agencies (H.I.S) they called me up and told me I would have to pay a fuel surcharge. Of course I refused but in order not to pay I had to spend several hours over the course of two evenings listening to their staff lie to me (very politely) until they finally said they wouldn't stop me getting on the plane if I didnt pay.

In Bic P Kan I returned a product because it wasn't what I thought it was. (The box was misleading). At first the staff refused to give me a refund on the grounds that I had opened it. Later they tried to claim that I couldn't return it because it was a Dos-V product. I told them I didnt know what a dos-v product was and they told me that "computer-people" would know. I still don't know what it is. In the end I got the manager and he gave me a refund.