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customer service (Page 6)

25 ways Japanese politeness can get on the nerves of Japanese people

There is such a thing as being too courteous, and an online survey ranked the 25 most common examples of just that in Japan.

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Lotteria’s Burger with Everything on It takes us on an emotional roller coaster　【Taste test】

After ordering Lotteria’s heavily stacked Burger with Everything on It, Mr. Sato was brought to the depths of despair and back to greasy bliss in an unexpected turn of great customer service.

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Nine tales of stunningly crazy customer complaints in from the Japanese service industry

In Japan, it’s said that “The customer is God.” But sometimes God is angry, and no one can quite understand why.

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We contact Apple with angry complaint, they defuse our hostility with a single word

Dealing with angry customers all day is harrowing work, but Apple’s team was able to quell our reporter Hatori Go’s rage with but a single word.

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In Japan, the customer is always king, even if he’s a horny one.

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Busboy found cleaning tables at blinding speeds in yakiniku restaurant

It’s good to see that the youth of today still know how to take their jobs seriously, but this guy definitely goes above and beyond!

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In Japan, customer service tends to pretty amazing across the board, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the restaurant industry. Some restaurants may be boisterously friendly and others may be quietly courteous, but you can just about always be assured that everyone on the staff, from your server to the owner, is working hard to ensure an enjoyable dining experience.

But even by those standards, this yakiniku restaurant goes above and beyond the call of duty, with an extensive list of extra special services they’re willing to provide. Of course, courteousness is a two-way street, so the restaurant also has 10 unique requests it in turn makes to its customers.

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Top 10 acts of customer service that Japanese men would rather do without

In Japan customer service can be pretty unreal. Little things like taxi doors opening or closing automatically and complimentary reading glasses at check-out counters are harmless and go unnoticed by many locals, and are probably under-appreciated. Sometimes, however, the desire to please the customer and attend to their every need is a little over the top and some people find it just down-right annoying. 

Online research group iResearch surveyed a group of 200 male 20-somethings for their thoughts on “Which services do you secretly wish people would stop providing?” Some of the results are pretty understandable, but some of them make you wonder if the guys surveyed just hate people in general!

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For chivalry, Japanese man tells female store clerk “I aint got nothing to say to you!”

Japan has a reputation for outstanding customer service, and as such you’ll usually find courtesy and pleasantness on both sides of retail transactions. As polite as clerks are, most shoppers are just as respectful towards the hard-working individuals who’re ringing their purchases up.

Still, not every customer is a joy to deal with, and one young women working at a convenience store thought she was encountering an extremely rude male customer who refused to be served by her. As it turns out, though, the man she’d mistaken for a chauvinist was simply following his own particular code of chivalry.

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Kansai International: The airport that’s never lost a passenger’s bag

One of the many things we love about Japan is its amazing customer service, from intelligent packing to omnipresent station attendants who pop out of the walls to help you.

So we weren’t too surprised to hear that an airport in Japan has been judged to be the best airport in the world for baggage handling. And the details of the top-notch service that helped Kansai International Airport clinch the title are really quite impressive. For starters, the Osaka airport hasn’t lost a single item of luggage in over 20 years.

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Survey ranks Japan’s most and least welcoming restaurants of 2014

The reputation of Japanese customer service speaks for itself, but among the various businesses in the country certain establishments stand out even more for making patrons feel at home. Recently, President Magazine conducted a survey of over 1,000 men and women to find out which eating and drinking establishments made this grade.

Restaurants are often ranked in terms of delicious food, variety, and value, but this time we’re going to see which eateries people feel most comfortable going into and which ones have all the charm and ambiance of a prison chow hall.

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Last night, a fast food delivery guy gave me 10 yen and it made my day

After living here for any decent length of time, it’s easy to grow tired of the seemingly endless slew of blogs either singing Japan’s praises or celebrating its weirdness. But the thing is, there’s a reason so many of them exist. While many of the claims bloggers in Japan make are somewhat exaggerated or simply rehashes of the same experiences foreigners arriving in the country decades earlier had, there are nevertheless times when living in Japan can make you realise that the country is actually quite special.

Just last night, for example, I found myself the recipient of a tiny but powerful gesture that made me feel – after more than eight years of living here – that Japan is pretty damn cool sometimes.

Last night, dear reader, a fast food company gave me 10 yen. That’s about US$0.09.

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Japanese people reflect on examples of irritating, excess customer services in Japan

Unless you grew up in Japan, you may be baffled by the emphasis that Japanese employees place on customer service. Customers in Japan are treated as royalty from every possible angle, even if they’re just out buying a few pieces of fried chicken at the local convenience store. If you’re not used to it, you may find the special treatment to be endearing, but after a while you may come to think of all the excess services as unnecessary and annoying.

It turns out that some Japanese people feel the same way about their own country’s customs regarding customer service. Have you ever felt the same about any of the following situations?

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Akihabara’s otaku: Fans of anime, idols, and… eating bananas on the toilet?

Tokyo’s Akihabara is known the world over as a haven for all things otaku. Whatever your nerdy penchant, be it J-pop princesses, moe-style hug pillows or plastic Gundam models, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for in one of the thousands of outlets surrounding the station, and the enormous UDX complex, which is home to dozens of shops, restaurants and event spaces, is arguably the most sophisticated nerd-catering venue ever built.

Like many smarter establishments, UDX’s public restrooms are kept spick-and-span pretty much all of the time, and politely worded signs ask patrons to refrain from certain types of behaviour while making use of the facilities. Until today, though, we’d never imagined that an entertainment complex would have to ask visitors not to block up their toilets with banana peels…

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【Thursday Throwback】Best Japanese customer service

I am crazy about Calbee Lightly Salted Potato Chips. I find its balance of saltiness and crispy texture to be really addictive. Some of my friends are fans of other chip brands, but I have stuck to Calbee’s for quite a long time.

The other day, I was enjoying a bag of chips when I happened to feel something like a hair in my mouth. I spat it out and saw something that looked like a thread attached to a chip. There was little doubt that what I saw was an accidental artifact of the production process.

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The happiest airline story ever: Man and smartphone reunited by awesome customer service

Airports and airlines frequently get a bad rap. The internet alone has more complaints about air travel than and episode of Evening at the Improv. However, buried deep among the stories of security gropings, crushed luggage and delayed flights lie some uplifting stories to restore your faith in humanity.

A while back we reported on JAL’s kind move to provide specialized guitar cases free of charge. That’s swell, but this story about what happened to our reporter Kuzo on his return flight on ANA after eating some dancing squid will brighten your day and remind you what customer service is all about.

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Secret Walls in the Subway: Japanese Customer Service at its Best

Japan has a way with customer service. From elevator ladies whose only job is to push the floor buttons to shop keepers who greet every patron with a hearty I rasshaimase (Welcome!), there’s no shortage of examples of great service. One such example has crept up from the depths of the subway to surprise and delight the people of the Internet: secret walls!
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Another Reason Why I Love Japan: You Get a Block of Dry Ice When Ordering Ice Cream To-Go

Japan has some of the best customer service in the world. We recently ran a story about a convenience store worker who packed our writer’s purchase so that the cold and hot drinks wouldn’t touch. This is just one of the many examples of the attention to detail that is given by workers in Japan. Sure, sometimes you land up having to wait five minutes at the department store while the clerk wraps every individual item (and the line of people behind you slowly creeps past the front doors), but this level of service is nothing short of amazing.

On my most recent visit to Baskin Robbins (it’s simply known as “31 Ice Cream” in Japan), I was shocked by the level of service I received after ordering a single cup of ice cream to-go. Most astonishing was the small block of dry ice that was placed on top of the ice cream to prevent it from melting on the way home.

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Japanese website Netallica recently conducted a survey of foreigners, asking them to name services and jobs in Japan that leave them in a state of bewilderment.

Take a look at the top seven services that make foreigners in Japan pause and exclaim, “What the heck?!”

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The fast food experience in Japan is much different that it is in America.

In Japan, step into any fast food restaurant and you are treated with the kind of service you see in commercials. Polite and attentive staff work in seemingly perfect unison to get customers their meal as quickly as possible, all while maintaining a smile on their face.

In America, the reality isn’t so golden. Fast food staff are often uninspired and lack enthusiasm and, perhaps as one reason for that, the customers can be loud, obtrusive and sometimes even violent.

At least, this is the image people are getting from two YouTube videos that have been making the rounds in the Japanese net since this weekend.

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