Improve Video Quality & Support Members: Kobe Steel Health Insurance Association Case Study

• Kobe Steel Health Insurance Association
• Scale: Approx. 50,000 users (including employees and families)
• Industry: Health Insurance Association
• Interview: Health Group, Planning Team
  Mr./Ms. Utsumi, Mr./Ms. Inoue

Objectives / Challenges

There were opinions that people did not know how to participate in Pep Up (health portal site) events or how to record data. Videos were created with an emphasis on clarity, but the quality was low and did not lead to results.

Solution

Introduce Ondoku to improve video quality with bright voices and accurate intonation.

Effects

The number of views for videos using Ondoku increased, and there were fewer complaints about the difficulty of understanding how to participate or record data. Additionally, work that previously required three people can now be completed by one, and use in other departments is expanding.

Introduction to Company and Implementation Department

We are a health insurance association whose parent organization is Kobe Steel, Ltd. Our members include employees from a wide range of industries, including steel, aluminum, materials, welding, machinery, engineering, and electric power, as well as affiliated companies.

The Health Group Planning Team, which uses Ondoku, is a department that plans health support measures based on data health plans. In addition to planning new events for health promotion, they also review systems to keep up with the times.

A major strength of our association is the ability to utilize the health portal site "Pep Up." Pep Up is a service where users can check health checkup results on their PC or smartphone, and receive points (incentives) for participating in health promotion events. Approximately 80% of health insurance members are registered, and we feel that we are able to communicate health promotion initiatives through Pep Up.

Please tell us about the background of introducing a text-to-speech tool.

We decided to introduce a text-to-speech tool because we felt the need to improve the quality of our video services.

Our association hosts health promotion activities such as walking events on Pep Up. We saw it as a problem that the implementation guidelines disclosed at those times contained too much text and were not being fully communicated to members. Since comments in member surveys also indicated that information was difficult to convey using only text, we decided to start providing videos that could communicate information through audio.

We immediately created and published videos using staff voices, but we couldn't call them high-quality videos as they had an undeniable "homemade" feel. However, there is no doubt that audio is often easier to communicate than text. While considering further quality improvements to accommodate a wide range of staff, we came across a text-to-speech service.

Could you tell us how you came to introduce Ondoku?

We decided to introduce it after evaluating Ondoku's ease of use and high quality.

Even when compared with other companies' services, the good balance, including cost, stood out.

One reason we feel the quality is high is the clean audio, which is at a level suitable for providing to members.

In addition, because we are from the Kansai region, we cannot speak standard Japanese perfectly. The ability to overcome such intonation issues is one of the charms of Ondoku.

When staff were actually recording audio, accents and ambient noise were problems.

However, since Ondoku can provide easy-to-understand audio, we thought it was ideal for improving video quality.

Compared to before introducing Ondoku, have the challenges been solved (improved)?

After introducing Ondoku, not only did the number of video views increase, but the number of viewers dropping out halfway through also decreased.

I believe this is proof that the quality has improved and people are watching properly.

Furthermore, results have been achieved in terms of reducing human costs.

Until now, a total of three people were needed, including those in charge of video creation and voice recording. Even coordinating everyone's schedule was difficult, and we had to re-record many times while worrying about noise.

However, since we started using Ondoku, the work can now be completed by one person.

Also, it's a big deal that we are no longer affected by the condition of the person recording the voice and can now guarantee a certain level of quality.

Please tell us if there are any other examples of how you use Ondoku.

Actually, the use of Ondoku is spreading not only in our planning team but also in other departments.

Recently, those in charge of the insurance benefit system have started using Ondoku to create videos to make difficult systems easier to understand.

Please let us know if you have any further requests for improvement for Ondoku.

There are times when I feel the intonation is different. Also, I have heard feedback that question sentences often have the intonation of affirmative sentences.

In addition, it might be nice to have a little more variety in the voices.

Right now, all the voices are formal, so it would be useful if we could use characters with slightly higher voices, like in an anime, for example.

I would also like to mention music and sound effects as features I would like to see added.

In particular, if there were sound effects that could be easily used before or after the narration starts, video creation could be completed using only Ondoku. Currently, we download them from other sites and combine them.

How do you plan to use Ondoku in the future?

We are considering whether we can use Ondoku for some of the health classes held by our association.

Since the lectures themselves can be as long as 50 minutes, we are considering to what extent we will use Ondoku.

Currently, we are planning to revamp our website to provide better clarity.

Specifically, we plan to create a video section to distribute information on insurance benefit systems and Pep Up events.

Furthermore, there is a movement to actively utilize Ondoku in public relations as well. We would like to play videos using Ondoku on televisions in the cafeterias of each business site to promote health promotion.

By using Ondoku, the quality of the videos provided to customers has improved, leading to increased views and preventing dropouts! Thank you for sharing such a wonderful example.

Ondoku is a text-to-speech service that can be used commercially for free. It supports over 80 languages and dialects, with a total of more than 650 speakers. You can listen to the types of voices and sample audio for supported languages here.