NTT Docomo Achieves 60% Onboarding Success Rates With Deep Insights
Japan's top mobile carrier studies millions of users to improve their experiences and prompt actions across multiple services.
Insight/Action/Outcome: With over 100 million users, NTT Docomo wanted a data tool that blended simplicity with detailed insights—and they chose Amplitude. Now, 400 business team reps use funnels, portfolios, and audience features every day without involving data experts. Individuals are empowered to discover bottlenecks in user engagement and hidden correlations in behavior. These insights fuel UI/UX upgrades, increasing first-time users' QR code payment completion rates by 20% through onboarding professional member refinements and ramping up conversion rates by 8x through marketing automation scenario improvements.
NTT Docomo is Japan’s leading mobile carrier, but we also offer various other services like payments, online banking, entertainment, and healthcare. This means we have a gigantic customer base. For example, our loyalty points program has 100 million active members—that's 80% of the Japanese population.
Tapping into the full potential of the vast and varied volumes of data to grow the business is a tough task. That's why you need a smart data strategy and the right tools to make it work.
Fishing for insights in a data pool
As a manager in NTT Docomo’s data department, my big goal is to help business teams extract as many insights as possible from the massive data pool. I was looking for a tool to boost user engagement across multiple services and help us understand our users. It needed to have powerful analyses, yet be easy to use.
I wanted to give our business teams the power to tap into data without needing data expertise. Amplitude was a true game changer in that arena. It allowed us to quickly and easily gain deep insights into the behaviors and characteristics of our customers across various services, helping our business grow revenue.
We started using Amplitude a year and a half ago. With the help of Amplitude’s management team and support team in Japan, onboarding went smoothly, and we were able to experience aha moments in a short period of time.
Amplitude was a true game changer. It allowed us to quickly and easily gain deep insights into the behaviors and characteristics of our customers across various services, helping our business grow revenue.
Improving onboarding procedures to increase completion rates by 20%
Because we offer so many services, we've had many lightbulb moments with Amplitude. One standout case in our area of financial payments was related to the d-payments service. As one of our key services, d-payments service allows our users to install an app and scan a QR code to make payments.
With Amplitude funnels, we found our onboarding completion rate was only 40%. Digging into the details, we realized users had to transition through a number of tutorial screens to understand the service benefits. Many dropped off halfway through the drawn-out process, and 43% left on the first screen.
Stunned by this discovery, we revamped the user experience and showcased the benefits clearly on the first screen. This simple UX change boosted the completion rate to 60%!
Furthermore, every piece of information needed was already available in the data assets. The key was leveraging the right tool to draw insights from it to drive action. Amplitude’s funnel charts shed light on those actionable insights that could improve the customer onboarding process.
A simple UX change inspired by Amplitude boosted our conversion rate to 60%!
8x boost in marketing initiatives’ effectiveness with cross-service analysis
Another breakthrough with Amplitude involved our online banking services. Increasing the number of customers actively using multiple services is one of our growth goals—and crucial for our ROI. However, finding scenarios to activate cross-selling is technically challenging when you're trying to spot connections among millions of users and the services they use.
Amplitude's portfolio feature really came through for us here. It enables us to combine all our different services into a single view, crunch the data, and find connections between user actions across multiple services.
By investigating cross-service data, our online banking team discovered that when customers changed credit card or QR payment settings or adjusted their deposits, they were more likely to open a new account. This insight, straight from the portfolio views, was invaluable. Our online banking team then used Amplitude Audiences to set up marketing automation scenarios targeting customer segments based on behavioral characteristics.
When I first saw the project’s results, I was surprised by its success. The insights gained from Amplitude’s portfolio deployed a scenario that improved our conversion rates from 2% to above 16% and reduced the cost per customer acquisition to one-eighth of its original!
The insights gained from Amplitude’s portfolio deployed a scenario that improved our conversion rates from 2% to above 16% and reduced the cost per customer acquisition to one-eighth of its original!
Untangling complexity
For me, Amplitude boils down to one word: Simplicity.
Before, technical barriers prevented business users from leveraging vast and complex data on their own. Our complex analytics tools required data analysis experts to extract useful insights. It was a classic big data dilemma: having a huge data volume is great, but it is meaningless if you can’t use it to produce actionable suggestions.
Limited resources caused a bottleneck when business users needed assistance from data analysis experts. We couldn't keep up with our customers' needs fast enough, nor solve business problems efficiently.
However, integrating Amplitude with our data platform changed everything. Now, our teams can analyze data themselves, set up events, create funnels, study cohorts, and use all our analytics tools without a data scientist’s help. The Amplitude interface is so user-friendly that, even when performing analyses across multiple services, the team can proceed without being aware of data complexity or technical difficulties.
Which brings me back to my favorite point: Amplitude’s portfolio solution. With a diverse portfolio of services like ours, finding the right path to nurture customers across all of them to improve cross-selling used to be a brain-strainer. However, Amplitude helped us solve this issue both efficiently and effectively.
Integrating Amplitude with our data platform changed everything. Now, our teams can analyze data themselves, set up events, and create funnels on their own without needing a data scientist’s help.
Every person, empowered
Today, approximately 400 employees use Amplitude. But I want to put the power of data at the fingertips of every colleague in NTT Docomo. So, by the end of 2024, I aim to increase our in-house user base to over 1,500 people.
Imagine if every team, department, and individual had access to all those insights. We would be able to maximize our business potential across multiple disciplines by more effectively enhancing the customer experience.
With Amplitude, we get deep insights into how users behave in our services so we can choose the most effective actions to take. Our goal is to improve the user experience and drive positive change based on insights into user behavior.
Imagine if every team, department, and individual had access to all those insights. We would be able to maximize our business potential across multiple disciplines by more effectively enhancing the customer experience.
Takashi Suzuki
Managing Director of Data Department, NTT Docomo
Takashi Suzuki is the Managing Director of the Data Department at NTT Docomo. His goal is to help business teams extract as many insights as possible from massive data pools.
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