Posts Tagged: customer service

Japan — 1 Comment
2
Mar 07

Don’t talk in English!

When I first came to Japan in 1997, the big chain school I worked at recommended all its teachers to open a bank account at Tokai Bank because of its proximity to the head office and the fact that the ATMs had English guidance. Soon after though, Tokai merged with Sanwa Bank and all the ATMs were replaced with the later bank’s Japanese-only machines. This caused long queues and much frustration as the foreigners randomly pressed buttons hoping to withdraw some of their money.

That was one example that comes to mind of a Japanese business going backwards during the country’s efforts to internationalize. Around the same time, I signed up for Japan Rent-A-Phone Center, which I think was called Hello Japan (or something like that) at the time. Their service was solely for foreigners, offering cheap phone line rental (600 yen a month) and excellent customer support in English. I still use their service as I’ve found the English support to be invaluable during the six times I’ve moved house in Japan.

A few take-overs or mergers later, and I got the following letter explaining the changes to their customer support service. If you want, you can skip it and just read my comments below.

Don't phone us 'coz we won't understand. Written English only, please!

Since I can fortunately get by in Japanese, and am not planning to move house again, this doesn’t really affect me, but I still find it amusing enough to write about. Let me highlight the best parts:

“our customer support service in English has finished.”

Why? Are there not enough foreigners using the previously foreigner-only service to justify paying for English speaking staff? Or have all the English speaking staff suddenly quit? Or perhaps spoken English is just too difficult to understand?

“…please contact us by FAX or Email. Or you can call our customer support in Japanese.”

Yep, it certainly sounds like the problem is with spoken English. So it’s okay to write in English, then?

“If you prefer to ask a Japanese person to call us for you, that is accepted as well.”

So the choices are: Write in English, speak Japanese, or get someone else to interpret. Got it.

“If you wish to apply for Yahoo! BB, please let us know by E-mail or FAX.”

Yep, okay. So you’re saying if we can’t phone in English, we must either E-mail, FAX, speak Japanese, or get someone to interpret. I figured that was the case first time.

“When you request us something by E-mail, please do not write any details.”

So let me clarify, phoning in English is out of the question, and if we write in English, we must keep it super simple. Got it.

“If you have any other inquiries… please give us a call in Japanese.”

Thank you again for stressing that we must not speak in English. Understood, again.

“… call NTT (Japanese only)”

Ah, so it’s not just Rent-A-Phone Center, but the corporate giant NTT that is afraid to use English on the phone.

Despite Japan appearing to embrace English, and push to make it the country’s second official language, they are still standing firmly in the starting blocks.

Definitely related: Is ESL in Japan a big joke?

Miscellaneous — 3 Comments
1
Feb 07

Ordering books from overseas

I’ve just spent the last two hours browsing the books at http://teachershop.scholastic.co.uk/, and have come away empty-handed, but not without a fight! I registered, and went through the shopping cart procedure until the final step when I was finally able to see the shipping cost. For some inexplicable reason, the cost of shipping was 20% of the order, which in my case was over 7,000 yen!

Feeling that that was outrageous, I called their customer service department and spoke to Ms. P. Rather than repeat the conversation, here’s the complaint I wrote afterwards:

Dear Scholastic Books,

Having just spent the last hour deciding on books, registering and getting to the final step of the order process, I was gutted to see you charge 30 pounds shipping (my order was for 150 pounds + 20% shipping, to Japan). Since I’m ordering books for personal use, and books in English are rather limited in Japan, I was hoping you might be able to offer a discount on the books, to help cover the shipping. But no, your support staff when I telephoned were adamant that the cost of the books and shipping could not be changed, and went on to tell me that no-one else from abroad has complained, and their orders were usually higher than mine.

I was one click away from completing the order, but your sales staff, with their “pay or get lost” attitude, convinced me to cancel.

Then you rub it in with your little graphic “We strive to be perfect”. Well, if you want to be perfect, please try showing some compassion, or at least some different shipping orders, or a warning about your shipping costs to save people like me some precious time.

Regards,
Nick Ramsay

Searching Amazon and Ebay, I still couldn’t find what I wanted so I felt pretty helpless. My next thought was to ask about the weight of the books. I figured since postage and packing was free on orders over 30 pounds in the UK, I’ll have them send them to my mum, and she can send them through the post office, regular mail for a fraction of the cost.

So, I called up Scholastic again and spoke to someone different. She offered to find out the weight but couldn’t tell me straight away, so I asked her to put me through to her senior.

Ms. L was as stubborn as Ms. P. It must be very frustrating to be in a senior position but have absolutely no say whatsoever on costs. Ms. L could do no more than repeat what I’d already heard and finished by saying “Isn’t it normal for companies to have fixed prices?” to which I responded, “No, Pam, not in Japan, the Japanese are far more flexible in the way they do business.”

Wow! Did I really mean that? I know that Japanese customer service is far superior to that of the U.K’s (just compare the cleanliness of Starbucks), but to suggest that the Japanese are less “to the letter of the law” surprised me. The Japanese, in so many ways, stick to the rules rigidly, but when I think about it, I’ve had floor staff calculate discounts for me on the spot, and many a time have I had prices rounded down (air conditioner installation, hair cuts, car service, etc.)

I haven’t ruled out the possibility of taking on Japanese citizenship when I’m much, much older, and little experiences like this (and England’s poor showing in the World Cup) all contribute to that eventual decision. (Note that I have spent my entire working life in Japan.)