SoftBank Corp.'s Corporate Business Division, Customer Growth Division, is the unit responsible for marketing and sales to small and medium-sized business customers within SoftBank's corporate business.
There are approximately 3.4 million SMBs in Japan, and this division serves their diverse needs. Sales representatives were fielding not only complex, customer-specific consultations and proposals, but also a high volume of routine inquiries about products, pricing, and contracts. These touchpoints are important to customers, and there was a growing demand to deliver more consistent, high-quality responses more quickly.
SoftBank had previously introduced AI chatbots and AI search features on its website to support customers gather information and solve problems. However, providing information instantly at the moment customers needed it, accurately measuring the self-resolution rate, and delivering an even higher level of customer experience all required a more sophisticated support system.
To address this, the division partnered with Sierra to build a conversational AI agent for SMB customers visiting SoftBank's corporate website (https://www.softbank.jp/business/). The AI agent answers a wide range of questions about products, services, pricing, and contracts in a natural, conversational format. For questions it cannot resolve, it directs customers to an inquiry form, after which a sales representative takes over.
This area was chosen as the first use case because it has the most frequent customer touchpoints and was seen as the fastest path to a tangible improvement in customer experience.
By having the AI agent handle routine inquiries instantly, customers can access the information they need more quickly. Sales representatives, meanwhile, can devote more time to complex consultations and proposals — areas where human engagement creates the most value. AI is positioned as a critical tool for delivering a higher quality customer experience.
About the AI agent currently in use, Mr. Abe of the Marketing Strategy Department Section 2, Marketing Division, Customer Growth Division, said:
"Sierra feels like a highly polished AI agent platform that is both easy to implement and easy to improve over time. In our case, by leveraging information from our website during the initial setup, we were able to train the AI agent — in a short period of time — the product knowledge and FAQs that would take a human considerable time to learn.
We also appreciate how easy it is to continuously improve the AI agent's response quality after launch. Sierra makes it straightforward to identify which questions aren't being answered well and what information should be added to improve accuracy, allowing us to continually enhance the AI agent's performance through ongoing operation.
SoftBank's corporate business covers a wide range of services, and the self-resolution rate* — which started at around 50% at launch — has now risen to 70%, thanks to iterative improvements to help the AI agent better understand customer intent and the relevant service."
*Sierra's monitoring feature uses AI to assess whether a customer's issue was resolved within the conversation, and calculates the self-resolution rate as the share of conversations that resulted in self-service resolution.
Mr. Tajima, Director of the Marketing Strategy Department,, Marketing Division, Customer Growth Division, shared the following thoughts on future expectations:
"We expect that as the self-resolution rate of the AI agent continues to improve, customers will be able to access the information they need even more quickly. Sales representatives will also be able to dedicate more time to addressing individual customer challenges and advancing proposals. We see this as an initiative that achieves both improved customer experience and greater sales productivity, and we intend to continue developing it."
Currently, the AI agent handles approximately 100 inquiries per day, with 70% resulting in customers finding the information they need and resolving their inquiries on their own. Only complex or highly individualized cases are escalated to sales representatives, ensuring customers receive the most appropriate support.
Going forward, the plan is to expand the use of AI agents across various customer touchpoints to provide a consistent support environment — with the goal of delivering an experience where customers can instantly access the information they need, whenever they need it.
About SoftBank Corp.
Guided by the SoftBank Group’s corporate philosophy, “Information Revolution – Happiness for everyone,” SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434) operates telecommunications and IT businesses in Japan and globally. Building on its strong business foundation, SoftBank Corp. is aiming to activate the potential of AI across its businesses and drive implementation in line with its “Activate AI for Society” growth strategy. While further growing its telecom business, SoftBank is expanding its AI computing infrastructure and AI and Cloud service businesses with the aim of becoming a provider of Next-generation Social Infrastructure. To learn more, please visit https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/
