---

These days, customers are demanding a highly satisfying experience in the digital domain, too. One key to a better customer experience is the timely delivery of information sought by the customer.

In order to provide optimal communication tailored to each of our customers in Japan, Mizuho has teamed up with Google Cloud Japan on initiatives for hyper-personalized marketing. In the initial phase, Mizuho will utilize the Google Cloud environment to build a digital marketing platform that integrates information such as behavioral data, which was previously spread out across multiple locations. This will help us provide even more personalized services to our customers. Mizuho has positioned hyper-personalized marketing as a major aim in the digital communication area.

Hyper-personalized marketing and its role in the continued pursuit of customer convenience

In an age when buying goods or services through the internet is commonplace, the importance of the digital customer experience has become widely recognized. "Customer experience" refers to the value of the experience a customer feels when using goods or services. Lifestyles and values have grown more diverse in recent years, so if suppliers of goods or services only adopt a standardized one-size-fits-all approach, they will find it harder to provide each individual customer with a satisfying experience.

In light of the above, Mizuho formed a strategic alliance with Google Cloud Japan in March 2022, and together we are pursuing initiatives to enhance the digital customer experience through hyper-personalized marketing.

This marketing aims, with the consent and understanding of customers, to utilize information about digital behavior and activity towards providing optimal communication and marketing tailored to each individual customer. While making use of the knowledge and development processes of Google Cloud,¹ Mizuho will integrate hyper-personalized marketing into digital channels such as websites, as well as offline channels such as services provided at Mizuho branches. The goal is to provide a new, highly convenient customer experience where information requested by customers is supplied at the time of their choosing, driving their purchase and usage of Mizuho products and services.

1. Google Cloud is a trademark of Google LLC.

Building a digital marketing platform on Google Cloud and beginning trial operations

Hyper-personalized marketing requires infrastructure that can process a variety of data in a swift and safe manner. Mizuho previously built a group-wide system development platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a major public cloud service. While implementing risk measures related to cyber security, we have utilized this platform as a public cloud. In addition to the AWS platform, we have now built a new platform on Google Cloud, a service with a diverse range of marketing tools. Improving our operational structure with this shift to a "multi-cloud system" is allowing us to develop an ideal IT environment. By linking up these platforms and digital channels in real time, it has become possible to communicate with individual customers at optimal times.

We will also need to collect and analyze the feedback of customers who have used Mizuho services in order to further refine our hyper-personalized marketing. To achieve this, we have developed a model for group-wide innovation in gathering internal and external feedback. Mizuho Bank receives over five million requests and comments every year through a range of channels, including surveys and contact centers. By consolidating this huge amount of data into a "voice of the customer" (VoC) tool and analyzing it in a cross-sectional way using text mining technology, we can more easily understand customer feedback and share it across the whole organization. We have also developed a system for improving various problem areas based on the opinions of customers and Mizuho employees. These initiatives have been highly evaluated, with Mizuho Bank simultaneously winning a 2023 CRM Best Practice Award and an Oboshi Award.

In this way, Mizuho has constructed (1) a digital marketing platform that ensures swift, safe and secure data processing and (2) a system for analyzing large volumes of customer feedback. By linking the two together, we can provide more refined support to help eliminate any concerns or worries our customers may have.

Understanding customer concerns and needs through digital communication
Mizuho's goal: To be the most trusted financial institution

Mizuho has long aimed to provide our customers with a personalized service, but hyper-personalized marketing will enable us to suggest products and services that are more finely tuned to each customer's lifestyle while also providing information that can help alleviate any financial uncertainty or concerns a customer may have. One example is Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) services. If a customer is thinking about using these services and visits our website to get information, Mizuho can analyze the customer's characteristics or searches within the website to ascertain whether they are seeking basic information about the NISA program, information about how to open an account, or other related information. We can then use banners or emails to provide customers with the information they need at just the right time.

This provision of optimal communication based on an understanding of the customer's circumstances is not solely limited to the digital domain. We also plan to integrate our digital marketing platform with the customer experience at actual branches, with digital communication utilized both online and offline to eliminate customer pain points in a timely manner. By steadfastly combining the new forward-looking approach of hyper-personalized marketing with our goal of working closely with our customers now and into the future, Mizuho will be able to further enhance the customer experience as we strive to be the most trusted financial institution in Japan.

Text and photographs: Mizuho DX Editorial Department

 

---