Cresta launches in Japan with Tokyo office and three new partnerships

Tokyo office supports Japanese-language customer experience

Cresta said its platform is available with a Japanese-language interface and Japanese voice capabilities. Jim Tamura has joined the company as Vice President, Country Manager, Japan, after previously leading ElevenLabs' business in Japan and Korea.

Ping Wu, Cresta's CEO, said Japan has "the highest expectations in the world for customer experience quality". He also pointed to labor shortages and other challenges that are making it harder for businesses to meet those expectations.

Japan's service culture is often associated with omotenashi, a high standard of hospitality that extends to customer service and sales. Cresta said meeting that standard has contributed to a national debate about how companies can provide world-class service in a sustainable way for employees. The company also cited a severe labor shortage and a new law requiring employers to prevent customer harassment of employees, known as kasuhara.

Cresta outlines three-part AI offering

Cresta said its technology is designed to help companies respond to these pressures through three capabilities. AI Agents resolve customer inquiries and handle repetitive work. Agentic Assist supports human agents in real time. Conversation Intelligence analyzes 100% of interactions, allowing companies to use information from conversations to improve future interactions.

"I joined Cresta to help Japanese companies give customers fast, personalized help wherever they need it, while empowering the people who deliver that help on the front lines," Tamura said. He added that the platform would help Japanese companies deliver service and personalization "sustainably and at scale."

Shop Japan, BELLSYSTEM24 and Kotoba Technologies join

Shop Japan, a retailer operated by Oak Lawn Marketing, is deploying Cresta to improve its customer experience. The company said Cresta will automate routine inquiries, support operators during peak call times and share the know-how of top-performing operators. Robert W. Roche, chairman and president of Oak Lawn Marketing, said the goal is to provide prompt answers to routine inquiries and personalized recommendations, including during periods of heavy call volume.

BELLSYSTEM24, a Japanese business process outsourcing provider, is partnering with Cresta to bring AI-powered Conversation Intelligence to Japanese contact centers. The companies said this will help clients understand customers, improve performance and assess which conversations should be automated and which are best handled by people.

Cresta is also partnering with Kotoba Technologies, a voice AI company specializing in East Asian languages. Kotoba's low-latency Japanese speech recognition and speech synthesis models will power more natural and responsive Japanese conversations across Cresta's platform.

What the launch means for Cresta's Japan strategy

Cresta described the three relationships as evidence of momentum in the Japanese market. Andrew Cannington, the company's General Manager, APAC, said Japan has been strategically important to Cresta from the start and is central to its APAC strategy.

The company said investor WiL, which connects global startups with Japanese corporations, is one of its key investors. By opening a Tokyo office and working with local retailers, contact center providers and voice AI specialists, Cresta is positioning its platform around Japan's language requirements and customer service pressures.