Driving Miss Manners

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Leave it to Toyota to come up with another variation on the hybrid theme. In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick gives us an inside look at the luxury car buying experience that Lexus is promoting in its Japan market to compete with BMW and Mercedes (“The Samurai Sell: Lexus Dealers Bow to Move Swank Cars”). Lexus has modeled its version of customer service after ancient Japanese hospitality traditions, including its samurai culture and tea ceremony. All its employees attend a three-day training course in the shadow of Mount Fuji to learn how to bow, serve tea, and smile in ways to make the Lexus car buying experience pleasurable and memorable. Needless to say, this is an unusual mix of business strategy, national culture and customer service.

As I thought about this story more, I began to see that this strategy is more than just a variation on customer service. Rather, what Lexus is trying to do is to create a culture of hospitality in the rough-and-tumble automotive industry. And there is a significant difference between customer service and hospitality. Being more transactional in nature, customer service is standard business practice, regardless of how well a company practices it. But hospitality implies ritual, location, and relationship, the sense of welcoming and care. Not exactly words you think of when “dealer showroom” comes to mind.

Clearly this hospitality strategy is in line with tenets of the experience economy. My posting from March 23 (“Jim Gilmore and the Geeks”) talked about some companies who have developed intentional experiences for their customers as a way to either distinguish themselves from their competitors or offer value-added features or both. I talked about the importance of authenticity if an experience is going to avoid the gimmick trap. With this hospitality approach, Lexus is coming close to blurring the lines between service and ritual. Since rituals usually involve an acknowledgment or honoring of some sort of significant life event or experience, Lexus may need to seriously look at how far they want to go down this path. To what degree does buying a Lexus in Japan signify an accomplishment or life passage? Would this only apply to first-time Lexus buyers, who have truly “moved up” in status and buying power that they can now afford a Lexus? We all grew up on the notion of cars as status symbols. How could Lexus use the ancient hospitality philosophy to take this reality to the next level? And why couldn’t Lexus apply this approach in the U.S.? Though the practices and ritual are not of American origin, the Japanese version of the hospitality tradition has the chance of striking a chord with a particular luxury car buyer – the acknowledgement that this purchase represents a major personal accomplishment. Combine this with a “ceremony” that is dignified, refined, and rooted in 700-year-old traditions and you can create one powerful and emotional connection.

Now I’m not advocating that the Big Three automakers copy Lexus’ hospitality strategy. But it wouldn’t hurt them to re-examine the entire buying experience through the eyes of the consumer. Otherwise, an old saying (ichigo ichie) from the Japanese tea ceremony may prove to be prophetic…

Treasure every encounter with another person, because it may never happen again.