Page 61 - MYM 2015

Customer Service and Retention in Japan Revisited:
It’s still in the Detail
Dominique Turpin PhD
Abstract: With Japan striving to remain competitive on the global scene, many Japanese companies have been rethinking their corporate priorities. Since many Western and Asian contenders have caught up on product quality, leading Japanese corporations are refocusing on a new surrogate to meet and exceed customer expectations: customer service and retention. Continuous research into Japanese management has identi ed seven golden rules that are fundamental for maximizing customer satisfaction and retention, and highlighted a key differentiator that still gives many Japanese companies the edge – attention to detail and a relentless drive to learn and improve the customer experience.
Japan’s stagnant economy over the last few decades, combined with the emergence of new global players in both the West and Asia, has forced many Japanese companies to rethink their corporate priorities in order to
achieve differentiation and become more competitive in the global marketplace. During the last three decades, it was product excellence – characterized by rst-rate quality, speed to market and the ceaseless introduction of improved products with more features – that helped Japanese brands win major shares in international markets. Product excellence was in fact a surrogate for customer satisfaction. Today, many global corporations (including a growing number of Chinese players) have caught up on this front in more and more industries. As a result, Japanese executives are refocusing their efforts on customer service. Customer satisfaction and retention have rapidly become key strategic priorities for many leading Japanese corporations, replacing market share
and new product development. As one Panasonic executive put it: “In the past, we were happy to provide the market with plenty of new products, matching any developments from our competitors in a matter of months. The focus was on having the exibility to manufacture smaller quantities of many different products. Today, product quality is taken for granted and the name of the game is service excellence.”
Customer satisfaction is not a new idea in Japan. Mitsukoshi, the longest established retail company in Japan, if not the world, is credited by Peter Drucker as being a pioneer in marketing (Drucker, 1974).As early as 1905, Mitsukoshi –established in 1673 –started distributing a manual to its employees entitled: “The Wisdom of the Mitsukoshi Apprentices Manual.”The manual classi ed customers into ten categories (a concept that is now known as market segmentation!) and provided tips on how to enhance customer satisfaction –tips that are still valid today. For example, Mitsukoshi’s words of wisdom, “A customer lost is a hundred customers gone,” recalls Theodore Levitt’s famous de nition of what business is all about –“to create and keep a customer” (Levitt, 1986). More recently, companies like Toyota, Shiseido, and UNIQLO have worked hard to excel at serving their customers.
Obviously, customer care is not uniquely a Japanese practice. Western corporations such as British Airways, FedEx, Disney, Club Med, and American Express were some of the pioneers in emphasizing the importance of looking after the customer. In fact, the adoption
by Japanese organizations of Western concepts of customer satisfaction and retention greatly resembled the adoption of quality control practices after World War II. As in the 1950s, most of the concepts and tools used today by Japanese corporations to enhance the customer experience originated in the West. Consequently, Japanese companies have lagged a few years behind their US and European competitors
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