Cresta Launches in Japan as Momentum in Asia Accelerates

Cresta, the AI operating system for customer experience, has launched in Japan and opened its Tokyo office. Jim Tamura, who previously led ElevenLabs’ business in Japan and Korea, has joined Cresta as Vice President, Country Manager. Cresta’s platform is available with a Japanese-language interface and Japanese voice capabilities.

"Japan has the highest expectations in the world for customer experience quality,” said Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta. “It is also a country confronting labor shortages and other challenges that are making it more difficult than ever for businesses to meet those expectations. Cresta’s vision is to make great customer experience an unlimited resource. Together with our Japanese customers and partners, we will bring that future to life.”

Japan is renowned worldwide for its high standard of hospitality, known as “omotenashi.” This extends to customer experience in all areas, including customer service, and sales. But meeting that service standard has often come at a cost to the people providing it, spawning a national debate about how to provide world-class service in a way that is sustainable for employees. And with a severe labor shortage coinciding with a new law requiring employers to prevent customer harassment of employees (‘kasuhara’), Japanese companies are at a turning point where they are rethinking customer experience from the ground up.

Cresta helps companies meet this moment in three ways. AI Agents resolve customer inquiries and take repetitive work off people’s plates, Agentic Assist augments human agents in real time, and Conversation Intelligence analyzes 100% of interactions so every conversation makes the next one better.

“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,” said Jim Tamura, Country Manager, Japan. “With Cresta, Japanese companies will be able to provide their world-leading service and personalization sustainably and at scale.”

Cresta is already seeing considerable momentum in the market, with three major new relationships announced today:

• Shop Japan: Shop Japan, a leading retailer, is deploying Cresta to elevate its customer experience. By automating routine inquiries, supporting operators during peak call times and sharing the know-how of top-performing operators, Cresta will help Shop Japan deliver high-quality service and grow sales.

• BELLSYSTEM24: A major Japanese business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, BELLSYSTEM24, is partnering with Cresta to bring AI-powered Conversation Intelligence to Japanese contact centers, helping clients understand their customers, improve performance, and assess which conversations should be automated and which are best handled by people.

• Kotoba Technologies: Cresta is 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, responsive Japanese conversations across Cresta’s platform.

"By using Cresta’s AI, we aim to achieve both prompt answers to routine inquiries and high-quality, personalized recommendations for each individual customer,” said Robert W. Roche, Chairman and President, Oak Lawn Marketing, which operates Shop Japan. “Even during periods of heavy call volume, we will deliver satisfying service to every customer and transform the contact center into a place that deepens our relationships with customers.”

“Japan has been strategically important to Cresta from the start,” said Andrew Cannington, General Manager, APAC at Cresta. “One of our key investors is WiL, a firm that connects global startups with some of Japan's leading corporations. Japan has shaped global technology for decades, and it is central to our APAC strategy. Today we are backing that with a long-term commitment to Japan.”