Striking a Lovable Tone in Japan

Centific helps a financial services company win on user experience in the world’s third-largest economy – and begin scaling a global copy testing platform.

Woman dictating voice notes into her smartphone at a work desk at night.

Our client, a financial technology company, faces tough competition in the Japanese market. Knowing the competitive importance of customer experience, our client leaves no stone unturned in ensuring its UX is best-in-class.

The client engaged Centific to conduct a study of the voice and tone of Japanese-language copy on its consumer-facing platforms. Our goal: ensure copy is on-brand, meets customer needs, and strikes the ideal tone – giving the client the edge in winning new customers and delighting existing users.

Running the numbers

The first step is recruiting a representative set of Japanese users for a robust quantitative survey. Conducted on Centific’s proprietary OneForma platform, the survey will rigorously assess how Japanese users perceive and assess the quality, tone, and formality of client copy.

Going in-depth

Armed with insights from the survey, we’ll take a deeper dive into the language through one-on-one user interviews with expert moderation. Between the survey and the user interviews, we’ll have a rich picture of Japanese user attitudes to our client’s copy, leading to actionable recommendations for optimization.

The work continues

The platform being created for this work – complete with custom reporting and business intelligence dashboards – is more than a one-off project for a single market.

As it’s built out, our platform will become a reusable and scalable testing system, helping our client understand how its copy resonates with users not just in Japan, but across the world.