How SoftBank cut its internal support threads by 60%

The challenge

A small team at SoftBank supports dedicated applications and services used by several thousand internal and external stakeholders.

Its responsibilities include application operations and maintenance, functional improvements, login and authentication management, and operational verification when business devices receive OS updates.

The team also responds to inquiries from users about operating procedures and issues. Before Synthesia, the team mainly relied on written manuals when explaining operating procedures. However, written information could be interpreted differently by different readers, and the wording used by individual support staff could also vary.

As a result, questions that should have been resolved quickly sometimes required repeated email exchanges.

Previously, resolving one inquiry could involve around 10 exchanges. Across a month, the team spent around four hours responding to inquiries.

Simply adding more manuals did not solve the underlying issue.

More documents also meant more effort to manage and update them, while differences in interpretation could remain.

What the team needed was a way for users to review the same explanation clearly and consistently, regardless of who asked the question or who provided the guidance.

The shift

The team began using Synthesia to turn selected guidance into video, including operating procedures for dedicated applications, device OS update procedures, login and authentication guidance, and company-wide explanations.

The goal was not to replace every written document.

Rather, video provided another way for users to review the same explanation when they needed it, helping reduce the number of times team members had to repeat the same guidance.

When information changes, the team can update only the necessary parts of an existing video.

For example, when a new OS version is released or a login screen changes, the relevant section can be revised without recreating the entire video from the beginning.

“The biggest change was that we could standardize the explanation. With documents, interpretation and wording could vary depending on the reader or the person explaining it. With video, everyone can review the same information in a clear and consistent way. It also became easier to update only the necessary sections when something changes.” — Hirohumi Mikami, SoftBank Corp.

One feature the team particularly values is Synthesia’s Japanese-language narration.

Natural, easy-to-understand Japanese helps explain business procedures and overview content clearly.

Using the same voice and phrasing each time also helps reduce variation in how information is communicated.

The impact

“The response internally has been very positive. In particular, people value that once a video has been created, only the changed sections need to be updated. When we introduced the use case internally, we also received many questions about how easy the updates are and how much work they require.” — Hirohumi Mikami, SoftBank Corp.

The team has seen measurable improvements after introducing video:

• The number of exchanges required to resolve one inquiry fell from around 10 to around 4 or fewer — an approximately 60% reduction. 
• Time spent responding to similar inquiries fell from around four hours per month to around two hours or less — an approximately 50% reduction. 
• Creating the first version of a video takes around 12 hours, while updating an existing version can be completed in around nine hours or less. 

Inquiries still come in, but issues that previously required around 10 exchanges can now often be resolved in only a few.

When applications or procedures change, the team can also update only the required parts of the video and share the latest explanation more quickly.

Why it matters

The team’s challenge was not simply that it lacked video. The real issue was having to explain the same information repeatedly.

Video gives users a way to review the same explanation when they need it, helping reduce long email exchanges and the time spent waiting for a response.

Time that had previously been spent on repeated inquiry handling can now be used more effectively for the team’s core operations, maintenance, and improvement work.

Users can also review guidance at their own timing rather than waiting for an individual response.

Because an existing video can be updated and reused, the team is also considering gradually building these materials into an internal library of operating guidance.