The Gist AI adoption diverges. Japanese firms are rushing into AI while U.S. companies show greater caution. Consumer rage studies differ. Americans complain more but often feel it’s pointless, while Japanese consumers avoid complaints due to friction. Service failures fuel rage. Difficult escalation and delays in reaching a human cause disloyalty and revenge behavior in both countries.
In June of 2025, I addressed the Eighth National Customer Experience Forum in Tokyo, sponsored by Salesforce Japan, NTT Marketing Act ProCX, TechMatrix, Genesys, TransCosmos and Toyo Keizai. Over 800 attended in person or online, and there were several trends that could be instructive to US companies.
Table of ContentsKey Issues From the Tokyo Forum Japan’s Aggressive AI Adoption
Key issues centered around Using AI to enhance CX as well as comparing American and Japanese complaining behavior in parallel studies of consumer rage. Key issues covered included:
Rushing into AI? Japanese industry is (in my opinion) rushing headlong into AI, leveraging AI to proactively identify probable points of pain and stay “one step ahead of the customer.” At the same time, American companies have become more cautious.Rapid customer feedback loops. Japanese companies are creating a strong, rapid customer feedback loop for using AI to prevent problems via aggressive onboarding and customer education as well as response via rapid experimentation and continuous improvement. Storytelling as AI input. Using storytelling as input to AI to embody the brand, as well as each customer segment. Fujitsu presented a story of Salesforce AI facilitating critical returns to a technology manufacturer where the AI agent was empowered to expedite return shipping and waive fees, depending on the customer situation. The AI agent could also escalate to a human when the customer expressed dissatisfaction. The same stories are used to select new employees and emphasize and illustrate empowerment to both front line employees and supervisors, thereby creating barriers to competition.Easy escalation policies. Promote easy escalation within companies to counter government legislation governing how companies protect employees from consumer harassment.
Related Article: Frontline Empowerment: A Customer Experience Revolution
Differences in Consumer Problems: US vs. Japan
These activities were affected by significant differences in the top consumer problems in Japan vs. the US as well as differences in consumer motivation and channels used to complain.
Consumer Rage in the US And Japan
Rage has come to the forefront in the US based on the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and the social media “cheering” by tens of thousands of online participants. The online version of The Atlantic has just published a scathing article accusing much of American business to intentionally providing bad service to maximize profits.
In Japan, there have been multiple instances of customers forcing employees to their knees and demand that they beg for forgiveness. The Japanese government has introduced legislation requiring companies to protect employees from such actions.
Comparing the Japanese and American Rage Studies
Japan and the US differ in at least three areas but show great similarities with customer complaint behavior and outcomes.
The Japanese study, conducted by LearningIt, CCMC’s partner in Japan, interviewed 5,000 consumers and found a lower level of problems in Japan than the US. However, some of the issues are harder to rectify in they are systemic rather than operational.
Complaint Rates and Top Issues
Only about 40% of Japanese consumers report encountering a serious problem compared to 75% in the US. The top Japanese problems were misleading marketing in ecommerce and discontinued products while in the US, problems dealt with defects and repair of autos, internet/cell phones and financial services.
Complaint rates differed, with 80% of Americans complaining vs. 50% in Japan. Keep in mind these complaint rates are for the most serious problems the household had encountered in the past year; complaint rates for less serious issues rapidly fall to less than 10%.
An additional difference is that most Japanese who did not complain due to the hassle and friction in the service process while American consumers felt complaining would do no good and didn’t know how to reach someone able to help.
Comparing U.S. And Japanese Complaint Behavior
This table highlights key differences in consumer complaints and motivations.
AspectUnited StatesJapanSerious Problems Reported~75% of consumers~40% of consumersTop ProblemsAutos, internet/cell phones, financial servicesMisleading ecommerce marketing, discontinued productsComplaint Rate (serious issues)80%50%Why Consumers Don’t ComplainBelief it won’t help, don’t know how to escalateFriction and hassle of service processMain ChannelsChat, digital firstTelephone still dominantDissatisfaction With Outcomes60% dissatisfied67% dissatisfied What Fuels Customer Rage
In both cases, rage, upset and disloyalty were primarily caused by difficulty in reaching a human and having to listen to long up-front messages.
CCMC’s Rage study found that the problems resulted in negative consumer behaviors including:
2/3 of Americans report having experienced rage at an organization43% have yelled at a service person21% think physical threats are OK9% are actively seeking revenge against a particular company.
Motivations for NOT complaining differed dramatically. American non-complainants believed that complaining was a waste of time because nothing would be done to fix the problem, even though they would lose more than $1,000.
Many Americans appear to subscribe to Chris Colin’s theory in The Atlantic, that companies are not interested in fixing the problems; therefore complaining is not worth their time. Consumers state their biggest loss due to the problem is time wasted, 8-16 hour vs. the amount of money lost. Consumers value time over money. Japanese non-complainants cited the effort and friction of complaining.
Evolving Complaint Channels
Complaint channels have evolved in both countries. When customers complain in the US, digital channels are the primary mechanism with chat surpassing email and website messages. US consumers value chat because it is answered relatively quickly and provides a written record of the interaction. In Japan the telephone is still king though use of digital is increasing.
The majority of complainants are left dissatisfied, 60% in the US and 67% in Japan. In both countries, leaving a customer dissatisfied results in the loss of 70-90% of customers as well as negative word of mouth. In Japan, most customers who are satisfied remain loyal and tell two people positive WOM.
AI Strategies: Japan Vs. The US
American companies are facing skyrocketing supply chain costs while Japanese companies are facing a shortage of labor to staff contact centers.
Case Studies in AI Service
Salesforce Japan gave a presentation on its AI-powered cross-channel service which demonstrated how a single integrated platform can be used to reference CRM and past transaction history to understand customer relationships and provide proactive support. The application areas extend beyond customer service to marketing and sales activities to include just-in-time education during the onboarding process by anticipating customer questions.
By centralizing management of high-touch and low-touch customer interactions—including past support, in-store history, phone call history, chat and chatbot history and website usage history—the company aims to achieve fully automated customer service through self-directed AI agents. Effectiveness was demonstrated in both insurance and tech company case studies.
Related Article: AI Agents: Modern-Day Cartographers Guiding the Digital Journey
Consumer Perceptions Of AI
Researchers told the conference that less than half of Japanese consumers are cognizant of company use of AI in customer service. Those Japanese consumers who are aware of AI use still view AI as a positive tool to enhance service while in the US recent mistakes have undermined both consumer and corporate confidence in AI.
Japanese companies are focusing on enhancing self-service, which the majority of customer prefer, and making it more accurate and effective. AI response is being intensively analyzed (using AI and VoC) to quickly identify failures so that the next generation can be produced. The failures are used to identify gaps in the Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) or the logic of how the information is used.
Journey Design And Prevention Strategies
NTT Marketing Act ProCX, a BPO company, advocated for detailed CX journey flow design for those cases where AI utilization and digital self-resolution are NOT effective, in order to create a management impact through CX design. NTT emphasized that customer experience should be optimized and loyalty strengthened via journey mapping for both AI-appropriate issues and those where AI is not appropriate.
Learning OpportunitiesView all
Priorities were set via the relative revenue damage of poorly handled questions and problems based on CCMC’s Market Damage Model. NTT’s strategies emphasized problem and question prevention over complaint handling based on CCMC’s research showing preventive analysis and actions providing 10-20X the ROI of handling complaints after they occur.
Japanese Are Behind in AI, but May Be onto Something
Japanese companies are about two years behind US companies in AI implementation but are rapidly catching up — possibly with less caution, at least in the short term.
At the same time, they are intensely measuring the outputs and impacts of AI and making rapid adjustments based on continuous feedback. It may be that this fail-fast approach will allow them to introduce AI to the Japanese public in a manner that avoids the negative fallout consequences experienced in the US.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
AloJapan.com