世論 What Japan Thinks

Last month japan.internet.com reported the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research regarding the use of support call centres. They interviewed 330 people employed in both the public and private sectors; 83.0% were male, 10.0% in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 32.7% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

I’ve once phoned a support line in Japanese for a problem with my ISP’s free router and the ADSL performance. The ISP was another division of the company I work for, and the notebook PC I was trying to connect with was a company-issue machine with the standard company installed software, but still they started the script from “Are you sure you’re plugged in?” The problem was something to do with performance being dreadful – I’d changed providers but the throughtput dropped from a few megs a second to barely dial-up speeds, and uploading even the shortest mail would time out. I finally convinced them it was their fault, not mine, that the line was slow, but it still took them another week or so to do whatever they needed to do at their end to restore the speed.

Q1: Have you ever contacted the support centre for your computer or peripherals? (Sample size=330)

Yes (to SQs)	61.2%
No	38.8%

Q1SQ1: On account of which part did you use the support centre? (Sample size=202, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
PC itself or internal parts	153	75.7%
Windows or other OS	47	23.3%
Software (excluding pre-installed ones)	36	17.8%
Printer or scanner, etc	27	13.4%
Router	25	12.4%
External hardware	24	11.9%
Pre-installed software (excluding OS)	24	11.9%
Keyboard	4	2.0%
Mouse	3	1.5%
Web camera	3	1.5%
Microphone or speaker	0	0.0%
Other	5	2.5%

Q1SQ2: Did the free support centre resolve your problems? (Sample size=202)

Yes, problem usually gets soon resolved	51.1%
Yes, problem usually gets resolved based on information received	21.4%
Yes, but problem usually only resolved after many calls	14.3%
No, problem usually doesn’t get resolved	11.5%
Other	1.6%