It has always been difficult to beat the Japanese when it comes to quality and service, and I am frequently reminded of just how seriously they take it.
I live in Japan and have to deal with Japanese customers on a daily base.
As they say here: "The customer is God".
Even one unsatisfied customer is going to destroy your reputation so companies are real careful here.
How does it work? What superpowers customers have in Japan, which they don't have anywhere else? Few years ago Sony had global week long outage, no one could play multiplayer, yet it is still a successful company.
It's more a cultural idea that you should treat/consider the customer very highly. It comes from the honour system of inner and outer circles. So conceptually the customer (honoured guest, okyakusama) outranks you.
You can't compare the Japanese as a people to, say, the typical American, who as a customer thinks the whole world is owed to him.
The Japanese are far less demanding, and understanding and forgiving of accidents like these.
So basically the signal-to-noise ratio in Japan is much greater than we are used to stateside, leading to actual problems being more visible and customer service departments taking them more seriously.