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From Ichiban to Kaizen

Guest post by: Eric Garner

Article Overview: This article describes how the Japanese were masters of customer care in the late 1990's and early 21st century. Take a leaf out of their book and apply the 7 principles to your own business.

From Ichiban to Kaizen

In the late 20th century, Japanese industry stormed the world. Their approach to new technology left the West struggling to catch up. Instead of sitting back complacently, like many in the West, Japan showed that by adopting strategies of total customer service, anyone could start from point zero and beat the world. 1. Ichiban

Ichiban is a Japanese word which has no equivalent in English. It means "a desire to be the best". Customer-focused organisations exhibit it throughout their ranks. The Receptionists want to be the best in town. The HR department wants to be the best in the region. The Sales department wants to be the best in the division. The board wants to be the best in their industry. The new twist that Ichiban brings to strategic thinking is that being the best can be achieved, not by ruthless cut-price aggressive attitudes towards competitors but by long-term, strategic and persistent attention to customers.

2. Benchmarking

Benchmarking means comparing the way you work to the "benchmarks" set by others. These could be others in your industry, others in your profession, or others in your business. In fact, anyone who performs at the current best. You can benchmark anything that you do, from the way you greet a customer on the phone to the service you give people after they buy. There's nothing complicated about benchmarking. You simply record what others do and then record what you do, whether it's your efficiency ratios, stock holding, or absentee rates. And then you set about being the very best around.

3. Everyone a Front-Liner

Rosabeth Moss Kanter said that, "No matter what strategy leaders inside the organisation devise, what customers see is at the front line." This was brought home very forcibly in a UK TV programme a few years ago when top executives swapped jobs with their front-line staff. In nearly every case, they were astonished at the difference between the customer strategy they thought was working and the one that actually was. If you want to stay in touch with what your customers experience, you have to be a front-liner all the time, either by exercises such as "in-touch" days, or by systems that allow you to constantly know what the customer thinks.

4. Quality Rules

Until Japanese industry showed us the way in the late 20th century, the idea that most people had of quality in the West was flawed. Western businesses believed that quality was determined by how good you could make a product or service. Not so, said the Japanese. Quality was, quite simply, whatever the customer wanted, delivered in a way that the customer wanted. While most Western businesses produced products and services as best they could and corrected any defects as they arose, Japanese businesses focused all their efforts on preventing defects in the first place. They simply followed the 7 R's: right time, right place, right way, right cost, right system, right spec, and right method.

5. Mobilizing Your Workforce

Japan is a country of few natural resources. Compared to other parts of the world, such as Africa, she is a poor country. However, unlike other countries, Japan is super-rich in the one resource that matters: her people. Through lifelong attention to this resource, from school through university and throughout their working lives, Japanese business has no choice but to mobilize every ounce of intelligence from their workers. That's why, when it comes to quality and customer service, Japan is streets ahead of every other country in the world.

6. Travelling Light

Serving the customer and their changing needs means travelling light. Organisations that grow too big, like dinosaurs, lose the fleetness of foot to adapt and change and so are brought down by those who are quicker to see and seize the opportunities. In the words of Rosabeth Moss Kanter, customer-driven firms have to become like "giants who have learned how to dance".

7. Kaizen

Kaizen, like Ichiban, is a Japanese word that defies exact interpretation into English. It is best defined as a process of continuous improvement. In making the Civic car, Soichiro Honda undertook massive research into what markets across the world wanted from a family car. He researched driving habits, dashboard styles, favoured colours, road conditions, weather patterns and so on and on, in a never-ending search for the perfect product. Kaizen is a bit like planting a garden. You aim for perfection. You fail and try again. You need to become an expert. You only learn by trying and learning.

The result of these 7 Japanese-inspired strategies was the demise of many industries in the West. Fortunately, the lessons were, and are still being, learnt. And that is, that to ensure your survival as a business, you must turn everything you do into a customer-focused enterprise.

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Article Tags: customer care, customer satisfaction, customer service



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