Critical Value

A lesson from Uniqlo. Plus: Hopping on the "Listers" bandwagon, and The Heard

I’ve often observed that complaining gets a bad rap — complaints can spark improvements, progress, and fresh creativity. (The best way to complain is to make things.) Etc.

But I was struck by a different angle on this same essential point — that complaints can have value — in an article about the global clothing chain Uniqlo, in The New Yorker. Here’s the relevant chunk:

The pride of [Uniqlo headquarters in Japan] is its on-site Customer Center. “It looks like a call center, but we don’t call it a call center,” [a communications person] said, stopping next to a closed door. “We don’t outsource.” Last year, Customer Centers worldwide took in thirty-one million “pieces of information,” fielding telephone inquiries, answering e-mails, monitoring conversations on social media, and gathering in-store feedback. “A lot of it’s gold,” Conway said. Call centers typically enforce strict time limits, but Uniqlo encourages its operators to keep engaging for as long as a customer wants.

It was one such conversation, with a Japanese housewife, that alerted Uniqlo to the fact that customers often wore the brand’s Ultra Light Down Jackets indoors, to save on heating, and that they wanted the sleeves to be snug enough that, when pushed up to the elbows, they wouldn’t slip down while washing dishes. … [The company’s creative director] told me that Uniqlo’s “favorite term is V.O.C., which means ‘voice of customer.’ ” She admitted that she often lurks online, reading customer comments on the brand’s site.

This practice dates back to the nineteen-nineties, when Uniqlo ran an ad in Japanese newspapers called “One Million Yen for Bad-mouthing Uniqlo,” inviting customers to bitch and gripe. No issue is too minor: faced with complaints that a particular black skinny jean tended to emerge from the dryer covered with lint, Uniqlo developed a lint-repellent coating. When clients said that Uniqlo’s merino wool was too scratchy, the company developed a new “super soft” yarn.

There’s so much focus on efficiency and productivity in contemporary business, and a traditional call center is a perfect example: The traditional goal is to handle calls as quickly as possible — if there’s even a number for customers to call at all, instead of being shoved to a digital form or a chatbot. I love that Uniqlo has flipped this idea on its head, treating the call center as a site of R&D, inspiration, and opportunities they otherwise would have overlooked.

Maybe sometimes the best thing to do with a complaint … is listen.

---

ENDORSEMENT

Have you heard about Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching? I’ve come upon several references to and endorsements of this documentary I can’t remember which one was first. And I admit, I was skeptical. But now I’m here to add my brief but enthusiastic endorsement — especially to TAoN readers.