Customers are gods, as a saying goes in Japan, where staff press buttons for shoppers in department store elevators and hotel porters line up to bow to guests.
While Japan is revered for this hospitality, or omotenashi, all that bowing and scraping may be sapping productivity. So much so that the nation has ranked lowest of the Group of Seven nations by that measure for nearly 30 years.
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“Success in raising the productivity of the service industry depends on whether we can get technology into service companies,” said Hidenobu Tokuda, a senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute Ltd. in Tokyo. “The problem is that service companies tend to be small, and unlike big manufacturers it’s tough for them to afford the initial investment of introducing technology.”
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“While omotenashi raises the quality of services, it requires a lot of time and effort,” said Yasuhiro Kiuchi, a senior researcher at the Japan Productivity Center in Tokyo. “It’ll be hard to change this culture, but Japan has the inventiveness to make use of IT or improve efficiencies without customers noticing.”