Balancing Enjoyment and Expertise as the Core of My Career, Leading to a Career Change to Communication Designer (CD)

– I heard that you worked at a travel agency in your previous job, where you were responsible for a wide range of tasks including tour planning and arrangement, production and promotion of brochures, operation of tours on the day, and customer support. What made you want to challenge yourself in a new role as a Communication Designer (CD) in an IT company?

In my previous job, as part of my work, I was involved in the production and proofreading of promotional materials (such as tour brochures). That job was very enjoyable and engaging for me, so I wanted to work in something that I would find enjoyable.

At the same time, I wanted to acquire expertise and specialized skills in the advertising and marketing industry, raise my market value, and achieve a balance between enjoyment and expertise in my work. While taking stock of the necessary marketing abilities such as planning, research skills, marketing, direction, and design, when considering what I should acquire, I came to the conclusion that "given my personality, I am better suited to handling various tasks (like the multitasking mentioned above) while enjoying them."

Looking back, I realized that I found it difficult to focus on just one job or project in my previous position. Rather than taking my time on a single job, I felt more competent in roles that involved a comprehensive range of tasks in a one-stop manner, managing multiple tasks.

In this context, I felt that the work of a CD requires multi-skills such as analyzing client challenges and target user behavior, considering adjustments to creative work, and designing conversations while deriving rules and trends from insights gathered through chats. My desired skills and what I believed I could do matched perfectly.

Moreover, from a broader perspective, I think the IT industry holds the power to create new services that do not yet exist in society, and it significantly contributes to improving and enriching people's lives. It can be thought of as an industry that is like the unsung hero supporting daily life, which is incredibly exciting when you think about it.

Therefore, I also wanted to be involved in creating services from 0 to 1, and I thought it would be great to contribute to problem-solving with a service that doesn't yet exist. The job of a CD is exactly that, especially within ZEALS, which provides a service called chat commerce. It's a completely new profession where one creates and improves conversations from the planning stage, and it forms the core of the chat solutions that ZEALS offers, making it a somewhat unique job that is difficult to experience in other companies and industries. There was excitement about being able to launch a service that never existed and the expectation that my proposal could be reflected in a new service and released to the world, allowing me to indirectly be involved in product development.

In the case of a CD, I can deliver services to a wide range of end-users. For example, being able to reach 200,000 people with a conversation script I created, I feel it is a great privilege to be entrusted with a job that allows me to connect with people I normally wouldn’t have access to.

Of course, it was not just about the work; I also resonated with the vision of ZEALS as a company, which is another reason for my joining. ZEALS aims to provide an experience that offers hospitality in the digital realm. From my experience working in a travel agency, I strongly recognize the importance of the "voice of the customer" from actual participants in tours, and having worked part-time at Starbucks during my student days, I have ingrained the importance of delivering customer service tailored to individuals and embodying the user perspective of "customer experience." I believed that what stood out about ZEALS was how well they consider how to design a good user experience and support decision-making, focusing not on push-type advertising of "I want to sell!" but on services that are aligned with the customers' needs.

I felt that the service of delivering a new customer experience and purchasing experience to users through AI × communication design is very advanced. I want to continue providing experiences that resonate with end-users by infusing the "thought" and "soul" of each CD into chatbots.

Client Responsibility After Two Months, Mentoring Juniors After Six Months, Leader After One Year

– After joining as a CD, what kind of work have you done so far?

I joined in April 2023, and after about two weeks of training, I was assigned to a team. For about two months after that, I learned the basics of my role as a CD with support from my mentor. After two months, I was assigned real projects and constantly trialed designing scenarios that would resolve client issues, leading to my first launch three months later.

The speed of progress was rapid, and by the time six months had passed, I became a mentor for mid-career hires, starting to support the development of junior staff. The number of client projects increased, and within a year, I was managing about ten existing projects, and I was also challenged to launch two accounts simultaneously (laughs).

As I devoted myself to the CD work, I was promoted to CD leader after one year, managing the team and also overseeing designers, which broadened my management scope. Eventually, after a year and a half, I was appointed as the director.

Since there are no correct answers in this area, I want to continue to pursue accuracy while adhering to a customer perspective

– Are there parts where your past experiences are being utilized in your current work? Conversely, have you acquired new skills?

One skill that I have been able to utilize is the experience of thinking from the customer’s perspective. During my student days, I learned the importance of providing service tailored to the diverse needs of various customers through my part-time work at Starbucks. The needs of each customer are different, and to put it bluntly, they can change depending on their mood that day. I needed to instantly assess the mood of the regular customers who came every morning and provide service that matched their mood that day.

Moreover, during my time at the travel agency, I took part in tours myself to reflect customer feedback into tours, which I utilized in my planning work. Such a user perspective is also being applied to my current job.

I understand that there are various user needs and am constantly exploring different approaches. Since there are no right answers in this field, I want to continue pursuing accuracy while maintaining a customer perspective.

Additionally, I have also been able to apply managing multitasking. In my previous job, I had to handle everything from research to budget management, team management, and sales all by myself while also needing to manage myself to meet deadlines. As CD work also requires multitasking, I find that I have been able to utilize these aspects.

On the other hand, the new skill I have acquired is the ability to execute detailed PDCA cycles. Since advertising is a living entity, it is necessary to capture the daily subtle changes in numbers and analyze what the factors are, forming hypotheses about the background. Speeding up the PDCA of hypothesis, analysis, and verification was something I hadn't experienced before. In my previous job, I certainly also analyzed customer feedback to plan proposals, but now I also output the analysis and verification results and the joy of seeing my work's performance reflected in tangible results is something I can only experience now as a CD. I believe this skill will be valuable not only in my CD work but also pushes the team's strategic advancement. Going forward, I aim to commit to the team's results and growth by leveraging my original strength in multitasking along with the PDCA skills I have newly acquired.

Since the performance and efficiency of the creatives and productions I create directly reflect back on me, I want to enhance my production skills with even more dedication.

Focusing on Details and Embodying Hospitality in Reviews and Feedback During Member Development

– Having gained various experiences as a CD, what kind of career are you envisioning for the future?

As I mentioned earlier, I want to create successful examples as a CD director. In my division, I have been selected as the first director from a CD background. I want to strive to fulfill this significant responsibility. I hope to bridge the opinions and consensus from the CD field to the upper management, and also be a guiding path for future CD members.

To this end, I want to commit to development as well. As stated in the vision of ZEALS, many colleagues join with intention, and I believe the manager's role is to respect that intention while helping them output and providing opportunities for growth.

– ZEALS promotes the vision of "Bursting Japan and the World." Through work, where do you think you embody this vision?

As a CD, I think one part of embodying this is by "supporting end-users' decision-making" through conversation design. Through account operations, I contribute to "increasing the number of people with intention," which is a part of ZEALS' vision. The data shows that in September, we were able to support 100,000 decision-making actions in a single month. Account performance is where the operational capabilities of the CD are most visibly reflected in numbers. When I see the numerical results of decisions that emerge from the tailored approach each communication designer takes for users’ needs, it makes me happy.