10% Call Answer Rate Increase at Hokuyo Bank: Service Expansion Without Adding Headcount

Hokuyo Bank, Ltd.

Banking·1,001+ employees·Customer Support

10% Call Answer Rate Increase at Hokuyo Bank: Service Expansion Without Adding Headcount

At a glance

• Call answer rate improved 10% to over 90%
• Service expansion managed without increasing labor costs
• Search logs now drive product and service improvements

The Challenge

Hokuyo Bank, a financial institution headquartered in Sapporo with approximately 170 branches across Hokkaido, had long prioritized phone support to keep customers from waiting. The strategy created heavy dependence on the call center, and staffing became a persistent problem. Regular retirements, personnel transfers, and Japan's worker dispatch law limiting contract staff to three years in the same department meant frequent turnover. Training new operators consumed supervisor time and reduced call-handling capacity, creating a vicious cycle.

The in-house team of five operators was fielding over 2,000 inquiries per month, well beyond sustainable capacity. The bank's target answer rate of 90% routinely fell below 80%, leaving customers frustrated and unable to reach support. The existing FAQ lacked search functionality and sat largely unused, so customers called instead. Without regular content updates, the FAQ couldn't keep pace with service changes or customer needs. The Digital Marketing Division, responsible for internet banking and the mobile app, needed a solution that a small team with other responsibilities could actually sustain.

Why Helpfeel

The bank explored multiple customer support solutions, including chatbots, but three factors led them to Helpfeel. First, the management interface was intuitive. When Deputy Division Manager Nishimoto tested the demo environment, he was confident his team could get operations running smoothly.

Second, and most decisive, was operational sustainability. Only three people in the division would manage the FAQ, all with other primary responsibilities. Implementing a tool that would sit unused due to operational neglect would be pointless. With limited time available for FAQ management, regular Customer Success support was essential.

Third, the bank learned that a partner bank in their alliance had already adopted Helpfeel successfully. The proof point from a peer institution gave the team confidence that the solution would deliver in a similar banking context.

What They Did

• Reviewed and cleaned existing FAQ articles, removing outdated content before migrating to Helpfeel in November 2023
• Worked with Helpfeel's Customer Success team to set operational KPIs: tracking FAQ access volume to measure self-service growth and monitoring the no-hit rate to ensure information reliably reached customers
• Established a monthly review cycle with the Customer Success team, using data-centered meetings as a pacemaker for improvement work
• Added more entry points to the FAQ when access growth stalled, then watched access numbers climb again
• Pinned high-volume topics (address changes, notification phone number changes, transfer limit inquiries) to the "Frequently Asked Questions" section for greater visibility
• Used search and inquiry data to identify service and app development improvements, leading to system revamps for address changes and transfer limits

Results

Call volume decreased even as the number of customers using the bank's app and digital services grew. The phone inquiry answer rate improved to over 90%, and the team handled customer inquiries without backlog and without increasing call center headcount. FAQ access volume trended upward as customer awareness expanded.

Monthly data analysis revealed which keywords repeatedly appeared at the top of searches, allowing the team to identify customer demand patterns and high-interest products and services. What they had previously sensed intuitively was now confirmed and visualized in data, giving them confidence in deciding next actions.

The data also surfaced specific friction points. When the app launched, searches and call center inquiries surged around notification phone numbers. Many customers had registered landline numbers but needed to switch to mobile numbers to receive authentication codes. By identifying this pattern early, the team could address it through both FAQ content and system improvements.

Helpfeel's insights increasingly drive product and service development. The bank has been strengthening app-related FAQ articles to keep pace with strategic investments, and expanding the FAQ to cover information managed by other departments. Senior leadership gave positive feedback: "The PDCA cycle is running well. Let's keep expanding the FAQ."

"The monthly review meetings with the Customer Success team serve as a valuable pacemaker for our team. Having a dedicated session to jointly review KPI-centered data and discuss improvements is indispensable for a team like ours that manages the FAQ without a dedicated specialist."

Nishimoto Kazuyuki, Deputy Division Manager, Digital Marketing Division

Looking Ahead

The bank plans to continue improving the FAQ based on data analysis, expanding the article library, and increasingly connecting FAQ insights to product and service improvements. The team aims to gain visibility into inquiry patterns from call centers outside the Digital Marketing Division and use that data to further enrich the FAQ, reducing inquiry volume across the entire bank.

The long-term vision is an environment where customers can naturally self-resolve their questions to such a degree that displaying a phone number on the website is no longer necessary. The team also plans to expand corporate-facing FAQ articles so that more customer segments can benefit. By incorporating AI tools like Helpfeel into daily work, the bank is raising the quality of customer support while improving operational efficiency and continuing to evolve to meet customer needs.

“The monthly review meetings with the Customer Success team serve as a valuable pacemaker for our team. Having a dedicated session to jointly review KPI-centered data and discuss improvements is indispensable for a team like ours that manages the FAQ without a dedicated specialist.”

— Nishimoto Kazuyuki, Deputy Division Manager, Digital Marketing Division