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Vacation travel – a “two-world” perspective

August 27, 2000 By Leave a Comment

Vacation Travel – a “Two-World” Perspective
By Mel Copen August 27, 2000
© Mel Copen, August, 2000

Although the size of the United States suggests traveling by air, if one has the time, nothing can match seeing the country by car. It is not only that the countryside looks very different from ground zero vs. 30,000 feet up, car travel provides things that cannot be achieved when using more rigid and regimented forms of transportation. Whenever time permits, I much prefer the tradeoff between speed, on the one hand, and the ability to immerse myself in the world around. Flying seems like an exercise of connecting the dots while driving is akin to painting the whole picture. I enjoy the flexibility to move at my own pace and the ability to visit not only the major sites, but to move off the “beaten path” and “explore.” There are so many wonderful places to be “discovered” and interesting local people to meet.

The ability to explore the US by car has been made possible by the heavy reliance we have placed on automobiles and trucks to transport goods and people. Over many decades we have developed a facilitating infrastructure. With a little forethought, one can be reasonably assured of finding access to food, fuel and accommodations along an excellent system of interstate highways and local roads.

There are frustrations that accompany travel by road. Construction can cause tie-ups and delays, as can hitting a major city during rush hour. Trying to push too far can lead to tense late-night searches for open gas stations, restaurants or motels. And neglecting to compensate for the height of the season in a major tourist center can also add to the challenge. More recently, an additional dimension has been added by trying to find a gas pump where you can fill up without having to take out a second mortgage on the house.

Signs are not always adequate and maps are not always accurate or up-to-date. When my wife, Beverly, and I travel together, she frequently concludes that we are lost. She is unable to understand that my reluctance to ask for directions reflects neither stubborn nor macho tendencies but is instead based upon the tried and true principle that, if I keep following the tip of my nose, we’ll get there. Most of the time we do. I, on the other hand, have been unable to convince her that navigation is not an arcane art devised by men only to torture women travel companions.

But all of this pales in comparison with similar experiences abroad, and especially in Asia. Beverly and I recently completed a 12-day, two-thousand mile trip up to New England and back, and each time we encountered frustrating events, we were able to relax and smile by thinking back to a similar experience trip we took in Japan. Everything is relative, including the degree of frustration.

Unlike the US, the Japanese tourism infrastructure is built for a much different type of travel – it’s all regimented. Trains or buses predominate. The first requires virtually split-second scheduling. The latter is extremely organized, with each bus disgorging its groups at an exact time and site, behind guides carrying flags to ensure that the various groups (all arriving at the same time) do not get mixed. Tourist hotels are geared to receiving those groups – and only those groups. We pulled into one fair sized city about 4 p.m. one afternoon and contacted one of the largest hotels (400 rooms +) about accommodations. They had a room, but due to the “lateness of the hour,” they could not provide us with dinner – they had already planned, to the head, for each of the guest arriving on the tour buses. We were able to find neighboring restaurants.

In Japan, everyone takes vacation at the same time – all going to the same places. As a result, there is huge demand for limited facilities at certain times of year. During the rest of the year, many of these places close or offer limited services. Consequently, there is very little requirement for the more casual atmosphere that we associate with motels.

One interesting effect of all this relates to road congestion. On the major Japanese holidays, more affluent people often travel by car, leaving the major cities to return to the smaller villages and towns where they were born, or heading to resort centers. Although Japan’s population is approximately half that of the United States, the country is smaller than the State of California. Only a handful of major arteries lead out of the cities. Consequently, when everyone moves simultaneously, the resulting congestion is incredible. On key holidays, the government issues advisories for the traffic jams anticipated at major highway intersections. Predictions often run to 80 kilometer back-ups or more. We saw one that extended 150 km (fortunately, as we were going in the opposite direction).

Aside from a few “super highways,” virtually all other roads run between closely situated small towns. The roads are narrow, particularly in the towns. A single traffic signal or a slow-moving truck can back up traffic for miles. Travel averaging more than 30 miles per hour would be considered a very fast pace.

Finding a place to stay becomes a real challenge. The first problem is the lack of motels. Most that exist are around the major cities, and the only “institution” that comes close are the “love hotels” that can be rented by the hour and seem to dot the landscape. But short of that, one must find an inn or a hotel in the larger villages or towns. Given the fact that almost all their guests arrive in groups booked by tour agents, there is no need for the ubiquitous billboards that line the US roadsides. And Japanese inns do not conform to a pattern that makes them readily identifiable, as in the case of US motels.

All this is compounded by the inability to read those signs that do exist. I’ve often thought of the disaster that can occur in a supermarket, when you can’t tell the label on a bottle of salad oil from that of a bottle of shampoo. While the roadside adventure may not result in foaming at the mouth, a similar type of effect can happen on the road when it’s starting to get late and you are looking for a place to stay. Traveling by car in Japan becomes quite an adventure – one that most Japanese find too daunting to attempt – something only a foreigner would do.

The road maps are something else. I’m sure they exist, but I have yet to find an accurate, detailed road map in Japan. For a country with such a strong technological bent, it is amazing. But this, coupled with the fact that addresses are almost meaningless (for example, in major cities, building are numbered not in geographical sequence, but by their chronology – i.e. the sequence in which they were built), makes it almost impossible to find a place without asking over and over again – assuming one knows what one is asking for. My wife was in seventh heaven, not only because I had to stop to ask, but also because her Japanese is far superior to mine she became our pathfinder.

As we compared our US and Japanese experiences, we also thought about the price of gasoline. Despite current high costs, nothing we paid on our way up and back to New England even approximated the cost of gas in Japan. One difference: here we spent a good deal of time looking for the cheapest station. There you knew in advance what the fixed price would be and you paid it.

Despite all of this, travel by car in Japan was an adventure that both of us will treasure forever. All of the advantages of traveling by car in the US were there. However, the frustrations certainly made those we experienced here seem trivial by comparison. Everything is relative. So next time you are on the road and fussing about something, remember, things could be worse (or perhaps different is a better adjective). But invariably, here or there, it will be worth the effort!
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Filed Under: Uncommon Sense Tagged With: , ,

Japan & the women’s revolution

October 7, 1999 By Leave a Comment

JAPAN & THE WOMEN’S REVOLUTION

By Mel Copen October 7, 1999

© Mel Copen, October, 1999

I just returned from a business trip to Tokyo. Some things haven’t changed much. It’s refreshing to see that there are still cities in the world where people can bicycle to work, leave their bikes on the street, unlocked and unchained, and still find them waiting there at the end of the day. The trains still run on time; new, spectacular glass and steel office architectural masterpieces continue to alter the skyline; and gas station attendants still stop traffic to let cars out on the street, after pumping gas and cleaning both the windows and the floor mats.

But under this veneer, many things are very different – and not only due to the impact of the economic recession, although indirectly it provides a significant element. Japan has now been in recession for 9 years, and although there is some optimism that it is about to turn, 50% of the people I spoke with are equally pessimistic. The male establishment is focused on what is happening to the domestic economy and to export sales. Japanese companies have been forced to cut back, and the myth of lifetime employment has now been exposed. Many men have been forced to take early retirement, and others have been laid off, and big expense accounts and lavish entertainment are becoming relics of the past. The watchwords now are “restructuring”, “globalization”, and “strategic alliances”. There has been a total about-face, as Japanese firms now struggle to “westernize” their management practices and unlike the past, when they were acquiring companies around the world, many are now becoming the “acquiree.”

But beneath this all, there is another change taking place, one that is only just beginning to be noticed by the dominant male establishment. It is the revolution that is being driven by Japanese women, and the subtle changes that are accumulating. The process is not unlike that of a gentle rain shower, which may be overlooked, except when one goes to the seashore and sees the ocean that each of those tiny drops helps create.

With younger women, teenagers through the early 20’s, the change is dramatic and visual. Walk around Tokyo and you will see the “uniform of the day.” It’s quite different from that of teenagers of a generation or two ago. Six to eight inch platform shoes seem to predominate. Red hair is “in.” Tattoos and body piercing are also part of the scene. And tiny cellular phones are so prevalent, they look like permanent ear-pieces. A very few fashion magazines set the stage, and substantial amounts of disposable income fuel the transformation.

But the most significant change is less apparent, and is being driven by their older sisters, mothers, and even grandmothers. The traditional role of the Japanese woman was to manage the home, bear a son and make sure that son got the best education possible. The Japanese father devoted most of his time to his company, contributed the family name and the income to provide for the family’s needs.

But today’s women want a career, despite a “glass ceiling” which, by comparable US conditions would seem to be made out of granite. As an example, the Japanese Labor Ministry reports that women comprise less than 12% of management positions in Japan (vs.46% in the US) and almost all of these are at the very lowest levels. Whereas women have begun to break into top levels in the United States, Japan’s top corporate offices are a feminine wasteland. As a result, more women are pursuing entrepreneurial activity, many seek work in foreign companies, which provide greater upward mobility, and discontent with traditional patterns has been growing.

This has resulted in major shifts. Women are marrying later, if they marry at all. The birthrate has plummeted. Whereas women in the US bear an average of 2.1 children, the figure in Japan is of 1.5 is far below the numbers needed for replacement. With relatively closed borders to immigration, Japan’s population will soon start to decline, at the same time that it is aging. In another 50 years, the population will have shrunk to 80% of the current numbers, in only 10 years, the proportion of citizens over 65 will exceed 20% (vs. 15% in the US). This means that fewer productive workers will have to support a larger aging population. And women who marry and raise children are not content with homemaking and child rearing as their sole focus. They are putting pressure on the men to spend more time at home and less with the company. And many are combining careers and family, by working at home on the internet, or using day-care centers. For growing numbers, divorce, once unknown, is the solution, including the “Narita Divorce” which refers to situations where, upon returning to Narita Airport from her honeymoon, the young bride decides she has had enough.

Buying habits are changing. Convenience stores abound and “convenience” is replacing “brand loyalty.” Discount and mail-order houses, insignificant a few years ago, are claiming substantial and rapidly increasing portions of the Japanese consumer economy – as “lower prices” are replacing “service.” The career-oriented woman is driving all of this.

But the big surprise, at least for me, comes from a change in the older generations – the mothers and grandmothers. While the husbands were with their companies, the women developed their own lives. Often the focus has been shopping trips and lunch with other women friends; art and flower arranging classes; more recently travel. The husband was absentee, commuting and working long hours, 6 days a week, with Sundays often taken up by golf. Now, with the layoffs and retirements, guess what??? Add to the fact that many of these men have had little in their lives besides their companies – few hobbies or other outside interests. Now they are home. The old saying “for better or for worse, but not for lunch” is compounded many fold, as the Japanese male expects to be catered to and the center of attention.

But the women are not about to give up their freedom, and again, divorce is becoming more prevalent in a generation to which the concept was formerly unthinkable. I heard reference to two terms, which are sometimes applied to these retirees who are home to stay. One translates into “wet leaves” – they stick around and are hard to get rid of.” The other describes “something you would like to throw away, but is too big to go into the trash barrel and remains around the house until you can decide what to do with it.”

The Japanese woman has always had a strong role inside the home. She managed the family funds and provided the family structure. Now she is starting to affect the male dominated society in ways that most Japanese men do not yet understand. Her impact will become more apparent, both socially and economically, as the years go by. I doubt that many senior executives currently feel threatened (although many are trying to identify the “strange” forces that are altering their once-stable business patterns). Japan has an enormous untapped resource here. If the nation is going to resume its role as an incredible force in this world, among other changes, it will have to find a way to both satisfy the needs of half its population and to incorporate its women into the fabric of everything that is going on.

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Filed Under: Uncommon Sense Tagged With: ,

Become your own customer

August 27, 1999 By Leave a Comment

BECOME YOUR OWN CUSTOMER
By Mel Copen August/27/99
© Mel Copen, August, 1999

Imagine the following. You have just tried to attach your new VCR to your TV and find that the instruction booklet is missing and that you can’t get the recorder to work. You call the store from which you purchased the device. Their response: “we will have someone at your house within two hours.” An hour later a technician appears and discovers that a special adapter is needed because yours is an unusual TV set. Thirty minutes later, after returning to the store, he is back with the adapter and the VCR is working fine. He thanks you for your business, apologizes for the fact that his store had not asked about your TV set and for the inconvenience and reassures you that if there are any further problems, a telephone call will bring a similar response. No charge. A great fairy tale?

The United States has become the greatest service economy the world has ever known. We started as an agrarian nation. However, we became more and more efficient in producing agricultural products, allowing resources to shift to manufacturing. Then as our factories became more productive and as other nations began to provide the goods we need, those resources shifted to the service industries. Today, substantially less than 5% of our population not only provides the food we need, but generates a substantial surplus for export and approximately 80% of us work in service businesses.

Although there are a few industries where this doesn’t hold true, overall, we are the world’s most efficient producer and distributor (measured in terms of productivity) of agricultural and manufactured products – far more so, for example, than Japan or Germany. Research and managerial efficiency have been two key factors that have allowed us to shift our focus to the services. And now we seem to be trying to apply those same “productivity principles” to the services. But the result does not always seem to yield the same positive effects.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the story in the first paragraph were true? But it is. This is what happened when I first bought a VCR while living in Japan. The only exaggeration – there was a manual – but being written in Japanese, it was just unintelligible to me. Contrast this experience with what many of us have come to expect.

You have just purchased a gizmo from Super Electronics Service Center and it doesn’t perform as you expected. First a call to the store. Probably a recorded device informing you of the store hours. After several attempts you finally get a number that gets you to an operator who refers you to the service department, putting you on hold. You listen to recorded music, ads touting the great service provided by the store, or unending silence – followed by a dial tone. After several more attempts you get through, only to be told that you must contact the manufacturer’s technical support group. Now you have the added pleasure of going through a layered automatic answering system. The first layer gives you 6 options, the second layer another 4 and by the 5th layer, you have finally been routed to the service person, only to be told that “due to unusually heavy activity, all personnel are busy and you must call back at a later time. With mounting frustration, you persist. Finally, success! A live human. After listening to your problem, the conclusion is that the problem sounds like one caused by an interface problem and you are referred to the technical support number of the interface provider. By now, if you are like me, you are ready to throw the whole danged thing through the nearest window. Try to ask to speak to someone in charge. The typical response – “I don’t have that information.” Or “we’ll have someone call you back” – which seldom happens.

What is going on here? People aren’t malicious, although it may seem so at times. At least two things are taking place: 1) the service concept is being “productivity-ized” – but from the viewpoint of the provider, not the user; and 2) the concept is being “depersonalized,” resulting in a minimization of human contact.

There is little question that it is much more efficient (from the viewpoint of the “service” provider”) to use a layered automated answering system than to have a human answer the call. It’s nice and neat – in theory, gets the call to the point where the matter can best be addressed. However, it is not always as simple as that. In many cases, the options for the caller are not clear, and very often, the result is less than satisfying. The key question is “who is being served?” Can “productivity in a service industry be defined with the same measures as apply in the other sectors?

The second factor may be even more critical. There is substantial evidence that you will get help faster from a passing stranger if your car breaks down on a less traveled road than on a super highway. In the first situation, it is clear to a passer-by that the options for help are few, and people feel a sense of responsibility. In the latter case, there are so many people that it is easy to assume that “someone” will help – and frequently one has to wait for the police or for services that have been specifically provided for that purpose.

When you talk to an individual who cares, things start to happen. In this ever increasingly complex world, we are more and more dependent upon each other for information and support. Yet we seem to have created an incredible number of systems that reduce interaction, depersonalize relationships and reduce incentives for people to assume responsibility.

Part of the problem comes from a willingness of the user to put up with poor service, particularly if price is the primary motivating factor. Higher service levels sometimes require higher costs. If one is not willing to pay that cost, the impact is double. Not only will the user not get the level of service desired, but other organizations, in order to compete, will be forced to reduce their service levels accordingly. However, good service and high cost are not necessarily linked. For example, there are retail stores that build their reputation on service and still match low prices– we all know a few of these. We wish there were more.

Another part of the problem comes from the people who make the decisions for service providers. Efficiency and productivity are viewed from the supplier’s perspective, and unless adequate customer feedback is received, there can be substantial gaps between perceptions and reality. And many of these decision-makers do not use the services they provide: airlines executives who never call for reservations, fly on non-refundable tickets, or sit in coach; computer executives who never access their own technical support numbers to get help when they have a problem; restaurant owners who don’t have to wait in line for an hour and a half to eat because they refuse to take reservations, etc. etc.

Last week I was on a plane sitting next to a fascinating man who was responsible for 4,000+ outlets of a well-known retail chain. In the course of conversation, we swapped stories of service frustrations. When I asked about his own stores, he described some very enlightened policies. I asked – “have you ever tested these?” “What do you mean?” “Well, for example, have you ever purchased something from one of your stores and tried to return it to see if your return policy works?” “No” was the answer. “How do you know your policies are working?” “Hum, I never thought about doing that. – I guess I don’t know.” By the end of the flight we had established a very cordial relationship and I had promised that we would both buy something form one of his stores and try to return it at another and would compare results.

How can we improve the level of service and get the human factor back in? The answer is by not accepting standards below expectation but by voicing opinions when service is not up to standard – and obviously, by going where the service is good. And for those of you who read this and are service providers, please – become your own customer and see if you are setting a standard that makes you proud. More than anything else, a service economy needs to rely on the pride and sense of responsibility of the service providers. This is also a way to relieve a good bit of the tension that currently exists in our society and make daily life more rewarding for all.

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Filed Under: Uncommon Sense Tagged With: ,