What is Japanese keigo, and why bring it up?

stevo


On 4/22/10, Sai Emrys <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 4:03 AM, <deinx nxtxr> <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> > Anyone else here old enough to remember when not answering a call by the
> > second ring was considered bad business?
>
> I ain't exactly old (27) but I certainly remember this.
>
> I actually have a few companies I'm a customer of (not counting mom n'
> pop shops) that follow it. E.g. sonic.net (my ISP) generally answers
> promptly and with someone not tightly bound to a braindead script or
> to just one tiny subsection of what I might need done (e.g. billing vs
> technical vs telling bogus DMCA senders to fuck off); rackspace (one
> of my server hosts) answers with someone who's even decently
> technically competent, if not admin level. I think in both cases this
> is geek culture at work though; talking to someone who doesn't know
> wtf I mean when I say that I need to repartition something and can
> they please install foo etc would be totally pointless.
>
> (It's certainly not always the case with tech companies; I've had
> others that seem to outsource to [not to be racist, but inevitably
> Indian] incompetent script followers as their first pass CSRs.)
>
> When I've found companies that do give good customer service, it's
> always been a pleasant surprise and they get good marketing from me as
> a result. I'm a bit surprised that other companies don't find that
> marketing to be worth the marginal extra expense of maintaining a
> decent call center, given the tremendous amount they're willing to
> spend on ad campaigns.
>
> I'm surprised nobody's brought up Japanese keigo yet. :-P
>
> - Sai
>