Rakuten Receives Customer Experience Innovation IT Award from Japan Institute of Information Technology’s 43rd IT Awards

Rakuten Group, Inc. and Rakuten Mobile, Inc. announced the companies have been awarded the Information Technology Award (Customer Experience Innovation Field)^*1 in the Japan Institute of Information Technology’s 43rd IT Awards*² in 2025 for development of the Rakuten Mobile AI Assistant 2.0 chat-based customer support service leveraging generative AI.The IT Award is presented by the Japan Institute of Information Technology to enterprises, organizations, groups and individuals whose outstanding efforts in driving business innovation have produced results through advanced IT applications. Award recipients have demonstrated success in creating new business opportunities, establishing effective business models and improving productivity across Japan’s industry and government institution operations.

Under its AI-nization initiative, Rakuten is integrating AI into every aspect of its business to augment human creativity, accelerate productivity and drive further growth. Going forward, Rakuten aims to continue leveraging rich data and cutting-edge AI technology to add value and enrich the lives of people around the world.

Overview of the Award-Winning Project:

Development of Rakuten Mobile AI Assistant 2.0 (RMAA 2.0) – Building a safe and accurate GenAI chat-based customer support service  

Project details: Rakuten and Rakuten Mobile developed Rakuten Mobile AI Assistant 2.0, an AI-powered 24/7 chat support service available via Rakuten Saikyo Plan and Rakuten Saikyo U-NEXT official websites. Users can discover information about Rakuten Mobile services, access relevant FAQ pages, compare plan prices with other providers, book appointments at Rakuten Mobile Shops, sign up for the Rakuten Saikyo Plan and more^*3. The AI customer support service was launched on December 18, 2024^*4.

Rakuten Mobile AI Assistant 2.0 leverages a multi-agent architecture with an executive agent directing user queries to the most appropriate specialized agent for online application, FAQ, sign up or store visit reservation. Each specialized agent generates responses by accessing real-time information from Rakuten Mobile’s website^*5.

In addition, AI safety guardrails prevent prompt injection, mask personal information^*6 and filter harmful content. A specialized agent also manages off-topic or inappropriate user inputs, ensuring a meaningful customer experience.

Rakuten Mobile AI Assistant 2.0 leveraged continuous, manual annotation to prevent AI hallucination^*7 and boost accuracy. A team of annotators spent over six months meticulously reviewing actual customer queries, RAG-generated search results and AI responses to create a training dataset of over 5,000 entries. This iterative fine-tuning process improved the system’s accuracy to exceed the 85% release standard.

Reasons for award: Rakuten and Rakuten Mobile were recognized for their contributions to developing Rakuten Mobile AI Assistant 2.0, an innovative GenAI customer support service that offers personalized, dynamic responses far beyond those of traditional chatbots. The companies were especially noted for successfully tackling AI hallucination through meticulous data and fine-tuning, demonstrating responsible AI implementation in a critical customer service.

The service’s robust 20-language support with strict quality controls, combined with user-friendly features including in-chat transaction completion, highlighted its technical reliability and operational integrity as a leading example of generative AI’s practical application.

Notes
*1 IT Award (Customer Experience Innovation Field): Awarded for initiatives to innovate relationships with customers and provide value, such as improving customer experience and creating new service, focusing on creating new competitive advantages for business.
*2 Site only available in Japanese.
*3 A Rakuten ID is required when signing up for Rakuten Saikyo Plan and Rakuten Saikyo U-NEXT.
*4 Rakuten Mobile Unveils AI-powered Chat Assistant for 24/7 Customer Support: https://corp.mobile.rakuten.co.jp/english/news/press/2024/1219_02/
*5 Rakuten Mobile website: https://network.mobile.rakuten.co.jp /
*6 Japanese Patent (No. 76672) for masking personal information input by customers: https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1801/PU/JP-2023-186945/10/ja
*7 A phenomenon where AI generates factually incorrect or nonsensical outputs.