いらっしゃいませ・少々お待ちください — Customer Service Keigo

When you travel or live in Japan, you'll hear customer service keigo every day — walk into a convenience store and hear いらっしゃいませ, pay at the register and hear 〜円お預かりいたします, leave and hear ありがとうございました.

This article organizes service keigo by the flow of a customer interaction, so you can both understand and use these expressions correctly.

Welcoming the Customer

いらっしゃいませ is technically the imperative form of いらっしゃる (the sonkeigo of いる/来る), but in customer service it has become a fixed greeting with no commanding tone at all.

You walk into a ramen shop and the staff call out in unison: いらっしゃいませ！ No response is needed — just smile or nod.

Guiding to a Seat

4名様ですね。こちらのお席にご案内いたします。 → A party of four, right? Allow me to show you to this table.

Note: When counting customers, staff use 〜名様 (meisama), never 〜人.

Taking Orders

店員：ご注文はお決まりですか。 客：ラーメンを一つお願いします。 店員：かしこまりました。以上でよろしいでしょうか。 客：はい、以上で。 店員：少々お待ちください。

Serving and During the Meal

お待たせいたしました。こちら、味噌ラーメンでございます。ごゆっくりどうぞ。 → Sorry for the wait. Here's your miso ramen. Please enjoy.

Payment

お会計は980円でございます。 (Customer hands over 1,000 yen) 1000円お預かりいたします。20円のお返しでございます。 → Your total is 980 yen. Out of 1,000 yen. Here's 20 yen in change.

Seeing the Customer Off

ありがとうございました。またお越しくださいませ！ → Thank you for coming. Please visit us again!

Differences Across Industries

Restaurants

• Focus on ordering and serving flow
• Commonly used: ご注文, お待たせいたしました
• Izakaya (pubs) are relatively casual; high-end ryotei use more formal language

Retail Stores

• Focus on product recommendations and checkout
• こちらの商品でよろしいですか → Is this the item you'd like?
• お包みいたしますか → Shall I gift-wrap it?
• 袋はご入用ですか → Do you need a bag?

Hotels

• The most formal language of all
• ご予約のお名前をお伺いしてもよろしいでしょうか → May I have the name on the reservation?
• お部屋にご案内いたします → Allow me to show you to your room
• ごゆっくりお過ごしくださいませ → Please enjoy your stay

バイト敬語: Common Part-Timer Keigo Mistakes

In Japan, convenience store and fast-food workers often produce expressions that "sound like keigo but aren't quite right." Japanese calls these バイト敬語 (baito keigo, or "part-timer keigo"). Knowing these mistakes will help you avoid them yourself:

Mistake 1: 〜のほう

お会計のほう、980円になります。 ❌ お会計は980円でございます。 ✅

〜のほう originally means "in the direction of" or "one side of a comparison." Using it here is unnecessary filler.

Mistake 2: 〜になります

こちらがメニューになります。 ❌ こちらがメニューでございます。 ✅

〜になります means "becomes." The menu hasn't transformed from something else. Use でございます instead.

Mistake 3: よろしかったでしょうか

以上でよろしかったでしょうか。 ❌ 以上でよろしいでしょうか。 ✅

Using the past tense よろしかった has no grammatical basis here — you're confirming something in the present, so use the present tense よろしい.

Mistake 4: 〜円からお預かりします

1000円からお預かりします。 ❌ 1000円お預かりいたします。 ✅

から means "from," making it sound like "I'll take from within your 1,000 yen," which is odd. Simply drop the から.

Summary

• いらっしゃいませ is the universal customer service greeting — no response required from customers
• Service flow: welcome → guide → take order → serve → payment → farewell
• Count customers with 〜名様, never 〜人
• Hotels use the most formal language; izakaya are relatively casual
• Avoid the four major バイト敬語 mistakes: 〜のほう, 〜になります, よろしかったでしょうか, 〜円から

Practice Quiz

Q1. A customer enters the store. What should you say? And what if they've been waiting a while before being attended to?

Q2. A customer's total is 1,500 yen and they hand you 2,000 yen. What do you say?

Q3. What's wrong with the phrase 「こちらがメニューになります」? What's the correct way to say it?