70% Self-Resolution: How Ashikaga Bank Transformed Web Support with AI FAQ

Ashikaga Bank, Ltd.

Banking·1,001+ employees·Customer Support

70% Self-Resolution: How Ashikaga Bank Transformed Web Support with AI FAQ

At a glance

• Over 20,000 FAQ sessions per month
• 70% of inquiry form visitors self-resolve
• 300 fewer phone calls per month
• Support now available 24/7/365

The Challenge

Ashikaga Bank's Direct Sales Division was handling over 4,000 phone inquiries per month, mostly basic questions about internet banking and mobile apps. The call center could only operate during business hours on weekdays, leaving customers without support evenings and weekends. With limited operator capacity, customers often couldn't get through during peak times.

The bank's website had roughly 670 FAQs scattered across individual product pages as plain text. Customers had to know which page to visit before they could find an answer. If they couldn't navigate there, they had no path to resolution. The team recognized customers were in a mindset of "it's faster to just call than try to search."

Previous chatbot implementations had fallen into disrepair after staff transferred to other roles. The bank needed a solution that could scale support without indiscriminately adding headcount, while maintaining service quality through inevitable personnel rotations.

Why Helpfeel

The team evaluated FAQ systems alongside call center staffing improvements. What set Helpfeel apart was the operational consulting support. With no in-house FAQ expertise, having ongoing support felt reassuring as staff rotated every few years.

The intent-prediction search was equally compelling. Customers could search using keywords like they would on the internet, and the right article would surface. While a category-organized FAQ was easier for the bank to manage internally, customers didn't know which category their question belonged to. Helpfeel would let them solve their problem smoothly, thinking from the customer's perspective.

What They Did

• Built a cross-functional FAQ operations team combining website staff and call center operators, bringing front-line customer perspectives directly into content creation
• Focused on minimizing no-hit search results, treating any search that returned no information as unacceptable
• Added an "FAQ" field to the stakeholder review format for homepage updates, ensuring teams considered FAQ changes alongside any content updates
• Deployed Helpfeel's inquiry form AI to surface relevant articles as customers typed their questions
• Made the FAQ accessible from the banking app and LINE in addition to the website

Results

FAQ access exceeded 20,000 sessions per month, with customers self-resolving even outside call center hours. Monthly phone inquiries dropped by approximately 300 cases compared to the previous year. Inquiries about internet banking and the app, which had been trending upward, reliably decreased.

The inquiry form AI delivered the headline result: 70% of customers who accessed the inquiry form transitioned to the FAQ and self-resolved without submitting a request. The intent-prediction search displays relevant articles as customers type, naturally guiding them to answers.

Beyond inquiry reduction, the team gained data-driven insight into what customers wanted to know. When FAQ data showed many customers searching for how to check their account number, the bank built a system allowing customers to look it up through an online application. The data-backed proposal convinced other departments quickly.

Coordination strengthened between the website team, call center, and product management. Previously, customer feedback from the call center would get delayed reaching the product team. With the FAQ team as intermediary, call center staff report things move more easily. Call center operators now proactively anticipate topics likely to generate inquiry surges and suggest adding FAQ articles in advance.

"If we could reduce phone inquiries by 35%, we could free up nearly 300 hours per month, which could be redirected toward higher-value activities like deepening our understanding of customer needs and improving services."

Kobayashi Kiichi, Division Manager

Looking Ahead

The team is exploring ways to connect call center data with FAQ data for unified operational use, with the goal of eventually generating FAQ articles directly from inquiry history. They've joined Helpfeel's Regional Bank AI Community to share common challenges and solutions with other banks already using the latest AI technologies.

With ongoing consulting support, the FAQ operates stably even as personnel rotate every few years. The bank has solved financial services' continuity challenge: staff transfers can't be stopped, but operations won't stop either.

“If we could reduce phone inquiries by 35%, we could free up nearly 300 hours per month, which could be redirected toward higher-value activities like deepening our understanding of customer needs and improving services.”

— Kobayashi Kiichi, Division Manager