Internal FAQ Usage Grew 5.2x in One Year: How PALTAC Reduced Inquiry Load with Self-Service

PALTAC Co., Ltd.

Wholesale Distribution·1,001+ employees·Internal Helpdesk

Internal FAQ Usage Grew 5.2x in One Year: How PALTAC Reduced Inquiry Load with Self-Service

At a glance

• Internal FAQ usage grew 5.2x in one year
• QA testing after article creation became nearly unnecessary
• Routine, repetitive inquiries dropped sharply

The Challenge

PALTAC Co., Ltd., a 126-year-old wholesale distributor serving drug stores, home improvement centers, supermarkets, and convenience stores across Japan, was scaling its digital transformation initiatives. As the company strengthened system capabilities and advanced digitalization, internal inquiry volume was trending upward. A team of just 3 to 4 people in the Information Systems Division was handling all phone inquiries about company-issued hardware and software, and the team was perpetually overwhelmed.

Until 2018, frequently asked questions were managed in Excel spreadsheets, but the format couldn't capture the full range of inquiry content. Knowledge wasn't being shared effectively, leading to over-reliance on specific individuals, and similar questions were written up differently by different staff members, making it hard to identify duplicate issues.

In 2019, the company introduced an AI chatbot. Despite high expectations, internal reception was poor. The chatbot used a single Q&A format with full-text search, requiring users to input exactly the phrasing the system anticipated. If they didn't, they got no answer. Initial usage averaged around 70 sessions per month, but the internal consensus quickly became "you can't find what you need" and "it's faster to just call." The more effort the team put into maintenance, the worse the return on that effort.

The most common inquiry types included initial PC setup, internal system usage, and password-related questions. Despite setup manuals being available, most people called anyway saying they couldn't understand them.

Why Helpfeel

While searching for a new approach after the chatbot's failure, the team discovered Helpfeel. With the long-term goal of consolidating inquiries from all departments into a single system, it was important that the tool be easy to use both as an operator and as an end user, even for non-IT departments.

The key criteria were ease of article creation and maintenance, and a search function capable of finding information regardless of how a user phrases their query. Helpfeel's intent-prediction search, which surfaces results from a wide variety of input expressions, was the decisive factor. The intuitive usability that the team felt anyone could master sealed the decision.

What They Did

• Built up the article library gradually and added General Affairs content before making a company-wide announcement, reasoning that a spike in usage from novelty-driven curiosity would be meaningless if users weren't satisfied and never returned
• Created a dedicated "PC initial setup manual" FAQ article with a link to the always-current manual, included in setup notification emails sent when issuing new PCs
• Established an internal rule: when the same inquiry is received by phone twice, a Helpfeel article is created immediately (one occurrence may be rare; two occurrences establishes it as a pattern)
• The General Affairs division, which receives inquiries from branch offices across Japan regarding attendance management, employment regulations, and form submissions, began creating their own FAQ articles in Helpfeel
• Leveraged monthly check-ins with Helpfeel's Customer Success team to track no-hit rates, utilization rates, engagement rates, and article performance

Results

By July 2024, just over one year after launch, monthly usage (search sessions) reached 365, a 5.2x increase compared to average chatbot usage of approximately 70 sessions per month. Phone inquiries also dropped significantly.

With the previous chatbot, verifying that AI-generated responses were correct required significant QA testing and subsequent tuning. With Helpfeel, the intended FAQ articles reliably appear in search results, making QA testing after article creation almost entirely unnecessary.

Kikuchi, who joined the team only a few months before the interview, said he was concerned it would be complex to learn, but was editing articles successfully from his first day. The editing interface (Helpfeel Cosense) is intuitive enough that no programming knowledge is needed; learning basic conventions is sufficient.

The PC setup manual approach raised organic awareness of Helpfeel across the company, since almost all employees interact with PC setup at some point. Because the FAQ article link remains stable even when the underlying manual is updated, there is no need to resend updated files.

Routine inquiries are decreasing as the habit of "checking Helpfeel first" takes hold. Questions about digital seal usage (electronic stamps), which had previously been common, largely disappeared. Staff can now focus on phone inquiries that genuinely require human intervention, such as individual system errors.

Feedback from the General Affairs division: "Helpfeel gives us a place to immediately direct people to answers, which has reduced the psychological burden of handling inquiries."

"PALTAC's corporate slogan is 'maximize customer satisfaction, minimize distribution costs.' For the Information Systems Division, the internal 'customers' are the employees who use the company's systems, so maximizing their satisfaction by enabling self-service is a core part of the division's mission."

Hidenori Morimoto, Chief, Information Systems Division

Looking Ahead

The target is to consolidate inquiries from all departments into Helpfeel within 2 years, and to grow internal FAQ usage to 10x the current level. The broader goal is to embed a culture of self-service problem solving across the entire company, which would further reduce inquiry volumes.

The team plans to involve additional departments, expand the scope of Helpfeel coverage progressively, and continue improving article clarity by simplifying technical terms, adding images, and refining content to keep pace with growing usage.

“PALTAC's corporate slogan is 'maximize customer satisfaction, minimize distribution costs.' For the Information Systems Division, the internal 'customers' are the employees who use the company's systems, so maximizing their satisfaction by enabling self-service is a core part of the division's mission.”

— Hidenori Morimoto, Chief, Information Systems Division