ElevenLabs and NTT DOCOMO Business Launch Collaboration to Realize Natural Voice AI for Contact Center Services

ElevenLabs Japan GK (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Japan & Korea General Manager: Moto Tamura, hereinafter "ElevenLabs") and NTT DOCOMO Business Corporation (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Katsushige Kojima, hereinafter "NTT DOCOMO Business") have launched a collaboration (hereinafter "the collaboration") aimed at realizing contact center responses using natural-sounding voice AI. This collaboration is supported by an investment and partnership initiative from NTT DOCOMO Ventures Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Yūko Sasahara, hereinafter "NTT DOCOMO Ventures") into ElevenLabs.

Under this collaboration, ElevenLabs' advanced voice AI technology capable of generating human-like speech will be combined with NTT DOCOMO Business's expertise in contact center operations and AI implementation, aiming to simultaneously improve service quality and operational efficiency in contact center responses.

1. Background and Objectives

In recent years, contact centers have faced growing challenges due to labor shortages and increasingly complex customer inquiries, making it difficult to balance operational efficiency with high-quality service. While expectations for AI adoption are rising to address these issues, human-like, natural conversation—complete with appropriate intonation, pauses, and contextual awareness—is essential in customer service settings. Response delays, in particular, can lead to customer anxiety or discomfort, posing a significant barrier to practical AI deployment. In sectors such as finance, responses must not only be accurate and fast but also convey politeness and reassurance. There is therefore a strong demand for AI solutions that maintain this high level of service quality.

ElevenLabs provides a voice AI platform centered on speech generation and speech understanding, with a key strength in reproducing speech that sounds indistinguishable from human voices. The company has supported real-world, operational-level voice-based customer service and business assistance across diverse industries including finance, telecommunications, public sector, healthcare, and e-commerce.

Meanwhile, NTT DOCOMO Business brings extensive expertise in building and operating business systems and AI platforms. In the contact center domain, it offers communication services such as "docomo business ANCAR®️," which leverages AI to enhance customer interactions, and actively promotes AI adoption across various business areas.

By combining their respective strengths, the two companies aim to make voice AI responses in contact centers more natural and practical, leading to the launch of this collaboration.

This collaboration is underpinned by NTT DOCOMO Ventures' investment in ElevenLabs. Recognizing ElevenLabs' technological capabilities and future potential in the voice AI field, NTT DOCOMO Ventures has established a strategic relationship through investment. By combining ElevenLabs' voice AI technology with NTT DOCOMO Business's operational implementation expertise, the venture arm believes AI can now support voice-based tasks previously dependent on human labor, enabling broader delivery of value to customers, and has actively supported the partnership between the two companies.

2. Overview of the Collaboration

Key initiatives under the collaboration include:

1 Creation and promotion of use cases

NTT DOCOMO Business will identify customer needs and develop use cases, while ElevenLabs will provide voice AI technology and technical support. Leveraging their respective strengths, the two companies will jointly identify and develop projects for voice AI applications, starting with contact center customer service and expanding into other business areas with high AI potential.

2 Joint development of industry- and task-specific voice AI solutions

The companies will jointly examine the design, development, and implementation of voice AI solutions tailored to individual customers' operational challenges and requirements. They aim to concretize practical deployment models across various industries, starting with finance.

3 Integration of ElevenLabs' voice AI technology (including ElevenAgents*1) into NTT DOCOMO Business's services and platforms

The companies will integrate ElevenLabs' voice AI platform and APIs into NTT DOCOMO Business's services and infrastructure.

As part of these efforts, a pilot experiment is currently underway to prepare for the full-scale deployment of a telephone response service using ElevenLabs' voice AI technology at the contact center of Docomo Finance Inc. The experiment will evaluate the feasibility of achieving natural voice conversations in customer service, as well as the effectiveness of the solution in improving operational efficiency and service quality.

*1: ElevenAgents is ElevenLabs' AI voice agent platform that delivers customer service and operational support through natural-sounding voice conversations.

3. Roles of Each Company

・ElevenLabs

Provides voice AI technology and expertise centered on speech generation and understanding, and leads the development and refinement of voice AI application models tailored to specific business needs.

・NTT DOCOMO Business

Leverages its expertise in building and operating business systems and AI platforms to lead the design and operational planning of voice AI-integrated workflows.

・NTT DOCOMO Ventures

With bases in Tokyo and Silicon Valley, NTT DOCOMO Ventures identifies and invests in cutting-edge AI startups and facilitates collaborations across the NTT Group. In this role, it supports the partnership between ElevenLabs and NTT DOCOMO Business, promoting the implementation and commercialization of this technology in the Japanese market.

4. Future Outlook

Going forward, the three companies will progressively advance technical development and pilot testing through this collaboration to enhance business operations using voice AI. Initial efforts will focus on concrete applications within financial industry contact centers, with plans to expand into diverse business scenarios across a wide range of industries and operational domains. The ultimate goal is to deliver operational support that achieves both high usability and high quality.

About ElevenLabs

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is a global leader in AI voice research and technology, building state-of-the-art AI audio tools for enterprises, developers, creators, and artists. The company now has a valuation exceeding $11 billion (approximately ¥1.5 trillion), and its platform is used by thousands of organizations, including more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. ElevenLabs supports large-scale, high-quality voice-over generation and the creation of multilingual, conversational AI voice agents.

ElevenLabs Japanese website: https://elevenlabs.io/ja

ElevenLabs (Japanese) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevenlabs-japan/

About NTT DOCOMO Business Corporation

NTT Communications Corporation changed its name to "NTT DOCOMO Business Corporation" on July 1, 2025. As a "Platformer for Industrial and Regional Digital Transformation" supporting autonomous, decentralized, and collaborative societies where businesses and communities can grow sustainably, the company aims to create new value and realize a richer society.

https://www.ntt.com/about-us/nttdocomobusiness.html