Japanese customers

For everything in Japan there is a season, even neckties

A former colleague of mine, a Japanese man who has been living in London for the past seven years, told me what he most misses about Japan is the distinctive seasons. Of course the UK also has four seasons, but this summer it has been rainy and cold more than usual and we all fear that it will merge seamlessly into the dark, damp days of autumn and winter.

Japan is well-known for its cherry blossom viewing season and anyone who has lived any length of time in Japan will also realise how obsessed most Japanese are about what food is best eaten at which time of year.

This sense of seasonal “rightness” even extends to clothing. I remember once hearing my home stay family debate whether it was too early in the autumn for the father to wear his maple leaf tie.

All this illustrates how being tuned into the seasons is vital to getting the right look and feel to your advertising campaigns and product packaging but there is also a strong commercial rhythm to the Japanese year which should not be ignored.

If you’re thinking about how to time your marketing campaign, there two bonus seasons each year, in summer and just before the New Year, when you’ll notice that advertising for luxury goods suddenly ramps up.

If you’re looking for the right timing for business proposals, it is also worth remembering that most Japanese companies operate on an April 1st to March 31st financial year. April 1st is when new graduates join companies and major reorganisations, promotions and salary changes are implemented. March is therefore a nervous month in most Japanese companies, and not a good time to propose new ideas. A mini-reorganisation is often carried out at the half year point too, on October 1st.

Japanese employees only take about half the holidays they are entitled to and so do not disappear for two weeks to a month in the summer as Europeans do. Still, business meetings in Japan are usually discouraged in July and August. This is partly because some factories close down around the Bon holiday period in mid-August, when people return to their hometowns to visit family graves, but also because the hot and humid weather saps people’s energy.

In September the business trip season starts, climaxing in the attempt to have all payments settled by the calendar year end, in order to start the new year with a clean slate. Unfortunately for those in Europe and North America who are working with Japanese companies, this final push coincides with the Christmas holidays.

The only time when Japan truly shuts down is in the first week of the year, and then another busy period begins, to the end of the financial year, and the annual ‘yosan’ (budget) panic. Then April is taken up with the after-effects of the reorganisations, after which everyone needs the Golden Week holidays at the end of April, through to early May. And so the cycle starts again.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly. This and other articles are available as an e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”

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Japanese customers like prompt, predictable suppliers

When I first worked at a Japanese multinational, the main method of international communication was telex. I am not as ancient as this makes me sound – it actually took several years in the 1990s for e-mail to become accepted in preference to telex within the company. E-mail was regarded as much less secure and reliable, whereas it was easy to check that the recipient had received a telex on our dedicated telecommunications network. Just to be extra sure, we were also told that every telex should be responded to within 24 hours, even if it was just with a “YRS NTD TKS” (“Yours noted, thanks”).

Nowadays, of course, e-mail has become much more reliable but nonetheless, there always remains that niggling doubt as to whether an important e-mail has reached and been read by the recipient. I do not advocate requesting a delivery or read receipt, particularly to customers, as this smacks of bullying, or mistrust. There are, however, lessons to be learnt from the telex era, particularly when it comes to working with Japanese colleagues or customers.

I encourage people working in virtual teams to agree a common e-mail response time, say 24 or 36 hours. This is usually greeted by groans from people who have so many incoming e-mails, they worry they will spend the whole day responding to them. The point is that the response does not have to be the full answer to the e-mail, it can just be the e-mail equivalent of a “YRS NTD TKS” – to show you have received it or are working on the response. It may even be a good idea to indicate when you intend to respond fully.

I advocate this prompt response whatever the nationality mix of the people involved, but it is especially important when communicating with Japanese customers or colleagues. Japanese customers are mostly highly risk averse, and looking for reliability and responsiveness in their suppliers. As a foreigner, you represent an unknown, and a risk. A quick reply shows that you are responsive and giving the other person priority. The reply should also be positive, in the first instance. Even if you think the ultimate answer is going to be “no”, it is good to show willing, with a phrase such as “we will investigate this further and revert”.

Being prompt, but also responding in a consistent way, demonstrates a third characteristic that Japanese customers value, which is a predictable process for dealing with their requests.

I conducted a Japanese client satisfaction survey for a firm of British patent attorneys a couple of years’ ago. The results were very clear. Happy customers were those who knew that their patent applications were going to be dealt with in exactly the same way each time by the British attorneys, from the method of response (letter, fax, e-mail etc), through to the wording, the person in charge and the timing.

Being prompt, positive and predictable will go a long way towards reassuring Japanese customers and colleagues that they made the right choice in you.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly. This and other articles are available as an e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”

In Japanese business, apologising for others can be sincere

A manager in charge of the customer call center serving North America, told me last week that she trains the call center operatives not to say ‘sorry’ when they respond to complaining customers. I assumed this was because in the US, saying ‘sorry’ would be seen as an admission of fault, compromising the company in any future law suit. It turns out this is not the only reason. “American customers don’t want to hear ‘sorry’,” she said. “They think it’s not sincere, and in any case, it is not the operative’s own fault, so why should they say sorry?” “What do American customers want, then?” I asked. “Resolution” she said, and added that operatives are also told to ‘acknowledge’ the complaint, and make some kind of empathetic statement, to show they realise that the customer has had a bad time.

This discussion of the American approach to customer complaints came up because I was describing in a training session what I thought was the right approach to dealing with mistakes in a Japanese context: say sorry, don’t make excuses (iiwake) and describe how this mistake is not going to happen in future (hansei, which literally means ‘reflection’). I was contrasting this with the British approach, which is to say sorry, but in a transparently insincere way, and then to go into lengthy or pointless explanations of why the error occurred, which usually sound like iiwake to my and most Japanese people’s ears. An infamous example is the pre-recorded announcement you hear all too often British railways; “We would like to apologise for the late running of this train, this was due to the lateness of the incoming train”.

Often British customer-facing staff won’t say sorry at all, for the same reason that the American customer service manager gave, which is that they feel that because the mistake was not their fault, or in their control, they do not need to apologise. This is very different to the sense of collective responsibility that customer-facing staff have in Japan. They will say sorry, very sincerely, even if it is not their own individual fault, because they feel that they are part of the company that made the mistake, so they do have responsibility and could have had some kind of control or influence on the outcome. They also wish to say sorry for the customer having had a bad experience.

A few weeks after I took over a sales role in a Japanese company, we lost some business from an important customer. It turned out that over the course of at least a year, we had been delivering raw materials to the customer out of sync with their production schedule, and at a price much higher than our competitors. Instead of blaming me, my team leader (who was also new to the job) went with me to the customer, and together we bowed deep several times, said “taihen moshiwake gozaimasen” (literally – “there is absolutely no excuse for this”), promised to lower our prices and deliver at more convenient times. The customer let us have 20% of the business back, on a trial basis.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly. This and other articles are available as an e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”

Customer visits key to sales success in Japanese markets

I was recently shown around the offices of one of Japan’s largest recruitment agencies. There was the bustle and hum you would expect of a successful company in one of the fastest-growing industries in Japan, but the sales department was empty and silent.

The director explained to me that any salesperson found in the office during working hours would be poorly evaluated and their bonus would suffer. It was tough on the sales people, who are often shown the door when they cold-call on clients. But the company strongly believes in gemba (or genba) shugi, literally ‘on-the-spot-ism’ as part of its sales strategy.

I am not suggesting that everyone selling in the Japanese market should door-step their customers, but before you pick up the phone or send an e-mail to a client, it is definitely worth considering whether you could arrange a face-to-face meeting instead.

I was first introduced to gemba shugi in the 1990s when I was working at a major Japanese trading company in Tokyo, selling granite to a Japanese stone wholesaler. Samples would arrive at my office from around the world, but instead of sending them off by courier to the customer, as I might have done in the UK, I called customers and arranged appointments. I did this not only so I could see their reaction with my own eyes, but also because most companies would try to make such a visit worthwhile by spending an hour talking about their business and swapping industry news, which often led to sales leads. One time, after a customer had given his opinion of a sample, he mentioned to me, as we chatted over a cup of green tea, that an architect had visited, looking for blue granite. Of course this was exactly the kind of lead that I was hoping for, so as soon as I got back to my office, on the other side of Tokyo, I sent off a request to all my contacts around the world, asking them if they had any blue granite. It led to several thousand dollars worth of business for us.

Gemba shugi is normally used in the context of a manufacturing operation, in the sense of it being important that managers go out on to the shopfloor, to see for themselves, or even ensure that decisions are made at the shopfloor level. But I believe it is the secret of success in Japanese sales and customer service, too.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly. This and other articles are available as an e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”

Japanese use of ‘telepathy’ to communicate

Pernille Rudlin was interviewed by Tadaharu Iizuka, Managing Director of Centre People, regarding the Japanese use of ‘ishindenshin’ or telepathy in order to communicate. It appeared in the Japanese language weekly Journey magazine, May 5th 2005.

Iizuka: Although Japanese attitudes towards communication and Japanese culture itself are changing, we still have a long history of unconsciously using ‘ishin denshin’ (telepathy or tacit understanding). We think that the other person has already understood what we are trying to say, so we don’t say much, but in the UK if we expect this to work…

Rudlin: …it can lead to misunderstandings or British people saying to themselves “you can never tell what Japanese people are thinking”. Research has shown that the degree of directness of expression varies between cultures. Americans are very forthright, the French quite forthright, the British in the middle somewhere, South East Asians are rather more indirect and the Japanese are very indirect. With Americans, what they say is all that they want to say, nothing more, nothing less. Which is why they find it hard to understand what Japanese people are trying to say.

Iizuka: The British are in the middle, as you say, and having talked to British people who have experience of living in Japan and they did indeed say that in this respect British are more like the Japanese than they are like Americans. Certainly compared to Americans British don’t say things as directly sometimes but compared to the Japanese, British people seem to make a distinction between when to be direct and when to hold back?

Rudlin: Yes. We definitely like to hint at things without having to say them explicitly. So I don’t think ‘ishin denshin’ is peculiar to the Japanese. I will give an example of something that happened when I was working in Japanese company. A Japanese colleague asked me to help him with a letter from a British company. He couldn’t understand the meaning of it, even though he was from a top university and spoke good English. I understood the meaning of the letter the moment I read it. The letter writer was forcefully expressing his dissatisfaction with services received, whilst keeping his anger reined in. The kind of expressions he used were “merely” and “if you would be so kind as to…” and “with all due respect”. It was very clearly as would say in Japanese ‘ingin burei’ or ‘hypocritical courtesy’, but at the same time you could not take offence at the expressions used. It was necessary to ‘read between the lines’.

Iizuka: As it happens the other day I received an e-mail in Japanese that said ‘I would like you to read between the lines to understand what I am trying to say…” so it does seem from what you say that there areas in which Japanese and British communication styles are similar. However I have heard that this expression in Japanese ‘read between the lines’ was actually originally borrowed from the West. Perhaps because in the past ‘reading between the lines’ was such a matter of course in Japan that it was not necessary to give it a label.

Rudlin: That’s a very interesting point. Highly educated British people in particular like to use euphemisms, for example if you see the classic British TV comedy series ‘Yes Minister’, you will see this. They like using a great variety of words to create subtle expressions.

However if as a Japanese person living in Europe you believe, having heard British use euphemisms, that you can use Japanese style ‘ishin denshin’ as the lynchpin of your communication with British people, you will find that things do not work out as well as you hoped.

Iizuka: Having worked in the UK for a long time I can think of many slip-ups caused by my relying on ‘ishin denshin’. I can see that it is born from my attitude that ‘we are all the same human beings’ so we can understand each other, I do not have to say anything as it is very obvious and you will surely understand it by yourself.

Rudlin: A big difference between Japanese and British communication style is that Japanese often do not use clear expressions when it is in fact necessary to do so. This can cause things to go awry, or misunderstandings or even mistrust. So it is vital sometimes to be very explicit. It is possible, given the amount of influence the USA has had on British society and culture, that the British are beginning to expect a more direct way of expression.

Iizuka: We are taught at school in Japan to express ourselves clearly but at the same time ‘ishin denshin’ culture is programmed into our way of thinking in other parts of our lives. So when we live in Europe we consciously have to adopt a different approach.

Japanese and British use of eye contact

Pernille Rudlin was interviewed by Tadaharu Iizuka, Managing Director of Centre People, regarding differences in Japanese and British use of eye contact for the Japanese language weekly Journey magazine, April 7th 2005.

Iizuka: What kind of experiences did you have when you went to junior school in Japan for six years? I hear that at that age one tends to pick things up very quickly, soaking everything up like a sponge?

Rudlin: The first six months were very tough. Of course I couldn’t understand anything and during the break times pupils from the entire school, right up to senior high school, would crowd round to look at my face or touch my hair. But children at that age are very adaptable and after about six months I was able to speak everyday Japanese and the other pupils had become used to me. I was still rather bad at the weekly kanji (ideographs) test but once I even managed to get top marks for a composition. Even now theme tunes from TV programmes, nursery rhymes and songs come back to me from time to time.
Iizuka: I suppose it was a natural progression for you after your experience of living in Japan to join a Japanese company and work for them for nine years. No doubt the experience helps you in your current work (training aimed at minimising communication issues in workplaces where there are different cultures)?

Rudlin: Intercultural communication obstacles do not only come between the Japanese and the British but also between the British and the French and other nationalities. Even if the nature of the obstacle varies, differences occur. In Japan one also says ‘the eyes are the windows of the soul’ or ‘eyes say more than lips’ but it does seem that the Japanese use eye contact a lot less when communicating amongst themselves. In the UK we have the same sort of expressions and believe that eye contact is an important communication tool. We believe eye contact during a conversation is very important and it comes naturally to us.

Iizuka: I totally agree with you. For example, it is still fresh in my memory that when I first joined a medical supplies company in Japan, the induction training specified that we should not look the client in the eye, and instead aim our eyes at the level of their necktie knot.

Rudlin: Certainly this is one aspect of Japanese culture and I am not saying which is right or which is wrong, just that if you are going to live in the UK and work here, if you do not pay attention to this cultural difference, it will cause friction and may lead to more serious situations.

I heard a of a case a while ago where a British woman complained about sexual harassment in her workplace to her Japanese boss and while she was explaining about it, asking him to do something about it, he spent the whole meeting listening to her with his eyes closed. I have seen this kind of behaviour many times in Japan and understand it, but to this woman, no eye contact meant he was ignoring her, and it simply made her more furious. She even took her case to court and claimed that she thought her boss had been sleeping in the meeting!

Iizuka: So despite the fact that he might have been closing his eyes in order to concentrate better on what she was saying, this was misunderstood to the point where the situation got unbelievably worse. You could also say that staring too hard at someone might be a problem too.

Rudlin: As I said at the beginning, the eyes are the windows to the soul, so it is important when talking to someone to exchange eye contact, to show that you are speaking from the heart. This way doing business and living in the UK will be that little bit more enjoyable.

Category: Japanese customers

For everything in Japan there is a season, even neckties

Japanese customers like prompt, predictable suppliers

In Japanese business, apologising for others can be sincere

Customer visits key to sales success in Japanese markets

Japanese use of ‘telepathy’ to communicate

Japanese and British use of eye contact

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