Omotenashi-CX

Thank you for stopping by to visit my home on the web.

I spent 27 years of my adult life in professional services roles in four countries across the Far East. 

Over those years I had the pleasure of travelling  across much of Japan, for business and pleasure, enjoying their warm hospitality and consistently extraordinary customer service.

Back here in the west, especially in our world of instant social media feedback, I saw the growing awareness that customer service and Customer eXperience are the lifeblood of successful and growing businesses.

This inspired me to go back to Japan to find out why customer service and the experience that comes from it are so extraordinary. I wanted to understand what they do, how they do it and why they do it. And then to document it in a way we can all understand.

Back in Japan, it didn't take long before I came across a word for the underlying customer service ethos I had experienced but never paid much attention to. They call it "Omotenashi".

Unfortunately, I also discovered that the word had been adopted by marketers to mean all things to all people. I then realised that the consistently amazing customer experience you find in Japan actually comes from much more than their relentlessly polite, considerate service. So I documented the other vital elements in the mix.

Based on this research I have put together an easy to understand model of their service philosophies, attitudes and behaviours that we in the west might adopt, adapt and learn to manage.

I hope to motivate CS and CX professionals in U.K. to use the Japanese example and this model to get inspired, get their teams engaged with the idea of delivering a memorable customer experience and get passionate about taking their service delivery to a higher level.

I'm Paul Willis