A Look into NaviDial, Japan's Legacy Phone Service

A Look into NaviDial, Japan's Legacy Phone Service(tokyodev.com)

77 points by pwim 32 days ago | 13 comments

rtpg 32 days ago |

Was kinda curious about the pricing and honestly the pricing[0] seems like one digit less than I expected. 10k JPY for the number, then 1k JPY per some of the various options (stuff like routing seems to be literally "we set up a phone tree and at the end of the phone tree we just dial a number you give us")

So it sounds like in the end you need to pay 10k JPY per queue + an extra bit of money to wire it all together. Maybe with Twilio you can set up something similarly fire-and-forget but "I explain to Docomo once how to set up my phone tree" sounds nicer than "I set up a twilio... thingy".

I'm sure somebody out there has at least considered being the layer over Twilio that just offers some of these straightforward services... but... toll-free numbers on Twilio cost 27 cents a minute in Japan. Sounds real close to that 33 yen.[1]

[0]: https://www.ntt.com/business/services/voice-video/freedial-n...

[1]: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/jp

jjmarr 32 days ago |

If the suicide prevention hotline cost $15/hr in the USA people would freak out! But since it's Japan it's whatever.

soraminazuki 31 days ago | |

There are many other reputable suicide prevention hotlines in Japan that provides toll-free numbers.

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/hukushi_kai...

enaaem 32 days ago | |

Because people want to copy the best things of another society, and not the worst.

pezezin 31 days ago | | |

There are plenty of morons in Europe wanting to copy the American healthcare model... (mostly to fill up their pockets)

freetime2 32 days ago |

I ran into this recently with ANA (All Nippon Airways). [1] There’s no better way to kill customer loyalty than to put someone on hold for 45 minutes on a charged phone call to make a basic change to a reservation that should be possible on the website (they also refuse to handle reservation-specific inquiries over email).

Just had a look and JAL (Japan Airlines) also doesn’t offer a FreeCall number. I haven’t had reason to call them yet though, so not sure if hold times are as bad as ANA. ANA recently redid their website and it’s a flaming pile of garbage (I could go on another whole rant here about all the ways it’s broken), which I suspect may be increasing call volumes for the past year or so.

[1] https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/contact/international/inte...

tetrakai 32 days ago | |

This is bizarre! When you call ANA from Australia they have multiple dedicated 1800 (free) numbers you can reach them at, including a call centre in the Philippines for simple issues that picked up straight away for me. I wonder why they're so much more customer hostile in their own geography?

freetime2 32 days ago | | |

In retrospect I probably should have tried making a free VoIP call to their US 1800 number. Although I’m not sure if their US office is able to make changes to itineraries that originate from Japan (and vice versa).

bschwindHN 32 days ago | |

I try to fly with Skymark when I can because their website is gloriously basic in the best way possible, it's like barebones server-rendered HTML. And you can book your ticket without payment being in the critical flow. You get like 24 hours to pay and that removes SO much stress from booking airline tickets. I hope they never change or "modernize" it with some shitty JS framework.

freetime2 32 days ago | | |

ANA’s domestic reservation system is not too bad in my experience, and I think is similarly basic like Skymark. They also allow you to hold a reservation for 24 hours without paying, and cancellations are free I think even after you’ve paid. It does struggle a bit with the concept of middle names, though.

But ANA’s international bookings use a completely different system that is the single worst website that I’ve used in the past 20 years. And yeah part of it is that they’ve tried to add some javascript without having the requisite competence to, say, perform proper input validation or render server error messages to the screen properly. I recently needed to enter an address, for example, but when I clicked the submit button nothing happened. It was only by snooping around in developer tools that I realized the server didn’t allow dashes in this particular address field.

Edit: apparently ANA is “upgrading” their domestic booking system to use the same Amadeus platform their international bookings use starting May 19, 2026. You can clearly see a different booking flow depending on whether you search before or after that date. So I retract my earlier positive statement about their domestic bookings.

joshstrange 32 days ago |

> NaviDial is an example of how infrastructure can outlive its original context. In 1997, it was a genuinely innovative service that solved a lot of problems for corporations while keeping costs affordable.

Was it? FreeDial sounds like it was innovative and NaviDial sounds predatory. NaviDial was actually the complete opposite of "innovative", it just changed who paid with completely predictable results.

I would be incessed if I had to pay money to talk to (or sit on hold!) with a company I do business with like that. I have never in my life called a 1-900 number and can't imagine a scenario in which I would.

The idea of charging for access to suicide/domestic abuse lines feels so wrong, I can't imagine why the Japanese people stand for it. Then again, I'm sure they would look over at the US with are "you really want to go there" look and be justified...

Jamesbeam 32 days ago |

Just wanted to leave a comment that I really enjoy reading the articles about how the Japanese solve or create infrastructure problems for their ageing conservative society posted on here the past few weeks.

Also read a very interesting piece about the railway system the other day. Thank you for providing a valuable perspective I wouldn’t get access to otherwise and also proposing possible solutions and practical advise for your fellow citizens. Keep up the good work.

noja 31 days ago |

With that title I expected a photo.