Hearing the Customer's 'True Voice' with AI to Drive Business Growth | Tayori Wins 'Encouragement Award' in Customer Support Awards

PR TIMES Co., Ltd. (Minato-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Takumi Yamaguchi; Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime / Nagoya Stock Exchange Premier: 3922; hereinafter 'PR TIMES') announces that its customer support tool 'Tayori' (pronounced: Tayori) has received the 'Encouragement Award' in the 2026 Customer Support Awards, announced on July 13, 2026, by the Japan Federation of Information Processing Societies, a public interest incorporated foundation. Tayori previously won the Special Award 'Omotenashi Tech' in the 2025 Customer Support Awards, making this its second recognition in the same award program.

Advancing Beyond 'Hospitality' as a Key Touchpoint for Inquiries | Two Consecutive Years of Awards

The customer support tool Tayori redefines inquiry handling as an opportunity to build 'positive relationships with customers,' enabling users to quickly create no-code interfaces such as forms, FAQs, and AI chatbots without specialized knowledge. Currently, Tayori offers five core functions: 'Form & Inbox,' 'FAQ,' 'Survey,' 'Chat,' and 'AI Chatbot.'

Since its launch, the Tayori business unit has continuously practiced dogfooding—using its own tools internally. Rather than treating inquiries solely as efficiency targets, the team actively leverages FAQ and AI chatbot functionalities to transform problem-solving into a pleasant experience. This customer-centric support system was recognized with the Special Award 'Omotenashi Tech' in the 2025 Customer Support Awards. This year’s 'Encouragement Award' marks Tayori’s second consecutive win in the program.

By participating in this awards program, we reflect on and refine the approach of 'Tayori Support' to ensure a comfortable experience for our daily users. We strive to make our practices the best example of Tayori utilization and aim to contribute value to all customer support professionals.

Background: Pursuing 'VOC Utilization and Business Growth in the AI Era'

VOC Collected Precisely Because of FAQ and AI Chatbots

This year’s recognition highlights our initiative to redefine FAQs and AI chatbots—typically seen as tools for reducing inquiries—as 'critical touchpoints for capturing genuine Voice of Customer (VOC).' Since searches on FAQs and AI chatbots are not direct feedback like form submissions or phone calls, we believe they offer valuable hints to uncover customers’ latent needs. Tayori’s customer support team reflected on the journey of meeting customer expectations while aligning development roadmaps with business strategy to achieve tangible growth, forming the basis of our award entry.

Tayori’s customer support team ('Tayori Support') has long practiced AI-powered customer service to help users resolve issues independently, quickly, and without stress. Over a year after launching the AI chatbot, we now offer a 24/7 inquiry resolution channel, leading to measurable improvements in support quality. However, contributing to business growth beyond inquiry handling remained an exploratory challenge.

Additionally, since 2023, Tayori has conducted an annual 'Customer Support Survey' to analyze corporate attitudes toward inquiry handling and customer behavior. The 2026 survey* revealed that the most common challenge among customer support professionals was 'VOC utilization.' Despite progress in efficiency and service quality due to AI adoption, many support teams now face the next challenge: 'How to effectively leverage customer feedback.'

*Customer Support Survey 2026: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000001634.000000112.html

Tayori Support believes there is significant value in going beyond handling individual inquiries—by maximizing the use of customer voices as corporate assets and returning these insights to fellow support professionals. To achieve this, we have rethought VOC utilization and explored methods for VOC collection, analysis, and collaboration with development teams to sustain a continuous product improvement cycle.

This year, our theme—'VOC Utilization and Business Growth in the AI Era'—has been recognized by the 2026 Customer Support Awards.

Tayori’s Vision: The Business Growth Cycle in the AI Era

Leveraging VOC for business growth has long been a priority in customer support. However, with the rise of AI, VOC is no longer limited to direct communications or form submissions.

Tayori Support has focused on search behaviors within FAQs and AI chatbots as new sources of VOC, actively translating these into the 'true voice of the customer' and swiftly relaying them to development teams.

Search logs from FAQs and AI chatbots often contain valuable hints such as 'This feature would make the service more convenient, even if not urgent enough to request directly' or 'More information like this would improve service usability'—insights we might otherwise overlook. To ensure we capture and act on these signals, we share some of our trial-and-error initiatives below.

① VOC Goes Beyond Collection and Analysis—It Must Be 'Translated'

Tayori Support believes the customer's 'true voice' emerges from 'translating' AI-collected 'search behaviors.' We conduct monthly reviews of 'no-response' search logs from Tayori’s AI-powered FAQ results and AI chatbot history, assigning dedicated leads. These logs often contain keyword-only inputs or ambiguous queries that are difficult to interpret at first glance.

Because team members who regularly handle both customer support and success directly engage with users, they can infer pain points and requests from input patterns. Through repeated 'translation,' we extract individual insights that lead to product updates.

② Weekly Collaboration to Rapidly Reflect Customer Feedback into Product Development

VOC cannot drive business growth if it remains only collected and stored. To ensure translated 'true voices' are swiftly reflected in product development, we have established fixed weekly meetings with the development team.

Development members assess technical feasibility, while business members prioritize based on overall strategy,