Introduction

SoftBank earned revenue of US$49.5 billion (JPY 5,690.6 billion, 1 USD = 115 yen as of 1 Jan 2022) in FY 2021, achieving a historical high YOY change of 9%, cementing itself among Japan’s largest telecommunications providers. By March 2022, the company’s 5G has reached over 90% population coverage, further expanding and building up capacity to cover in-demand areas.  

The company has a well diversified revenue base and is organised into four divisions, viz., 

• Consumer
• Enterprise
• Distribution
• Yahoo!, Japan/Line (e-commerce, media, strategy and others)

Softbank was the first to deploy Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) in Japan. Deployed in October 2021, MEC aspires to provide a low-latency, high-quality and highly secure service experience when using 5G. With MEC, consumers can access servers much faster, improving the experience between device and server through 5G.

Drive for CX

Beyond Carrier’ is a strategy that aims to expand business fields other than telecommunications, while further growing our core telecommunications business

Junichi Miyakawa, President & CEO

To identify the top 10 telcos in APAC to ace customer experience, twimbit conducted a detailed study of 80 leading Asia Pacific telcos and benchmarked them across four pillars:

• Digital experience
• Service experience
• Employee experience
• Brand experience.

Softbank ranked 10^th with its excellence in service and brand experience. It achieves this by;

1. Enabling customers to access their needs easily. 
2. Providing specialised multi-brand groups to address different consumer needs without requiring to change phone numbers or any lock-in. 
3. Utilising visual technology and AI to enable communication between disabled and abled individuals.

Key Initiatives

Expanding beyond network

‘Beyond Carrier’ is a key initiative by SoftBank to expand beyond the network and maintain sustainable growth in their telecommunication business. The telco utilises public and private network data to develop tech based solutions to maximise corporate value and launch them across all industries.  

Driving subscriber retention via multi-brand strategy

The telco devised a multi-brand strategy consisting of three brands; SoftBank, Linemo and Y!mobile. They specialise in providing specific features to address many of the customers’ needs as well as provide choice to the consumers. 

1. Softbank enables users to leverage unlimited data plans
2. LINEMO provides digital-only brands.  
3. Y!mobile grants lower monthly charges for medium to low data usage.  

This multi-brand strategy allows customers to shift between brands with no costs and SIM lock-in.  Furthermore, this strategy helps customers simplify their data plans and plan management processes, which serve to retain customers within the group.  

Enhancing worker productivity using digital tools

Softbank’s goal to digitize Japan also includes digitizing their workforce. The Digital Worker 4000 project was established in Japan in 2020 to ensure workers spend their time on value-adding operations for customers, viz.; 

1. redefining business processes,
2. utilising digital tools,
3. and digitizing the equivalent of 4,000 human hours of productivity.

This is achievable with RPA (robot process automation) integration on back-office operations. Since its establishment until the end of FY21, Softbank has saved approximately 3,000 human hours.

Helping the hearing impaired

Propelling the aim to digitalize Japan, SoftBank designed ‘Sure Talk’, an app that enables conversation between sign language, voice and AI to aid individuals with hearing impairment. The app uses the camera to track physical movement, while the AI processes sign language using NLP (Natural Language Processing), converting the signals into text and speech.

This has greatly empowered the hearing-impaired community, allowing them to easily communicate with family members and friends. Moreover, with version updates, ‘Sure Talk’ is consistently improving its service and customer experience.  

How you can match up with/to Softbank

Softbank places an extraordinary emphasis on deliver a great end customer experience. From leveraging its multi-brand strategy to retain customers and fulfil customer needs, to maximising the potential of 5G technology to provide an enhanced customer experience for deaf individuals, Softbank has established new benchmarks for success. The telco masters three to ace overall customer experience.

• Launch multiple brands to reach all customer segments
• Automate employees’ monotonous tasks
• Use technology to connect the unconnected