In Japan, it’s said that お客様は神様です (okyaku-sama wa kami-sama desu), or “the customer is God”. That attitude certainly has its downsides. It tends to force companies to cater to “monster customers” (called “claimers” in Japanese) who take advantage of this hospitality. It also requires a surplus of staff to ensure customers are well served at all times with minimal waiting. The labor required to sustain this level of service has even led some Japanese business and retail commentators to question the very utility of this attitude toward customers (a point I indeed to address in subsequent posts).
But I have to admit that, as a consumer, it’s very nice to walk into a store and feel like you’re being attended to, and that store employees are engaged and aware of when customers need help. Whenever I’ve been in Japan for a while, I find myself experiencing a kind of reverse culture shock when I come back to the states and walk into a typical department store, where asking questions more often than not results in a stifled sigh and a glare of annoyance.
This attitude toward customer service extends not only to customers – it extends to their belongings as well. I remember a few years ago, when I went to Tokyo on a trip with my manager, one of the housekeepers accidentally knocked her suitcase off of its stand, spilling the contents onto the floor. She received notice and a verbal apology over the phone. Before we boarded the shuttle bus back to Narita, three staff members, including the general manager and assistant general manager, came out to express their regrets at this grievous error, and bowed in apology. I was both impressed by the customer service, as well as slightly worried about what sort of verbal scolding the poor housekeeper received behind the scenes.
So I wasn’t all that shocked when I saw this Newsweek Japan report on a video that just went viral on social media of a Japanese airline staff member straightening off and wiping off bags as they came off of the plane.
As Newsweek JP reports, it stands in stark contrast to the handling of bags on Airasia, which made social media headlines earlier this year, or on some of the videos that have come from Chinese airports in the past few years. Heck, it’s a big jump from my own experience in the states, where a delay on a Delta flight out of Atlanta during a rainstorm ended with passengers receiving rain-soaked bags once we landed in Seattle. (Most of us got off lucky: the poor passengers who decided to check cardboard boxes received parcels that were on the verge of falling apart.)
Like I said, this level of customer service requires an almost daunting level of commitment to obtain. And I’ll be talking about the downsides of the “Customer is God” approach in a subsequent article. For now, however, I have to admit that this video has me wishing I was back in Japan already…
