Brastel

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Brastel Co., Ltd.
Type Ltd
Founded Tokyo, Japan (1996)
Headquarters 2‐6‐2 Yokoami, Sumida‐ku, Tokyo 130-0015
Key people Junji Tanabe (CEO) and Kenji Kawai (CEO)
Industry Telecommunication
Products International Calling Services
Revenue $10.3 billion JPY (2005)
Employees ~250 (2005)
Website www.brastel.com

Brastel Co., Ltd. is a Tokyo-based telecommunication company established in 1996 that provides international calling services to 240 countries and territories around the world at 24-hour flat low rates. Brastel services both the foreign community in Japan and Japanese nationals with friends and family abroad. Brastel provides native speaker customer service professionals in over 20 languages. Diverse cultural skills and specialized training enable Brastel's staff to offer the highest level of service to its diverse international customers in Japan. The company also created customized CRM technology to effectively develop customer profiles and follow-up on their specific needs. This entrepreneurial spirit was central to the launching of Brastel Smart Phonecard, the first rechargeable international prepaid card in the world in which customers could instantly add more money to their cards at 40,000 convenience stores throughout Japan. The key to Brastel's success and long-term growth has been the balance of customized cutting-edge technology and highly skilled professionals who have the linguistic and cultural abilities, as well as professional skills to serve over 20 distinct markets.


Contents

[edit] History

Founded in 1996 as a private limited company Brastel Co., Ltd. started out offering callback service (based in the USA), primarily targeting the Brazilian community in Japan.

In July of 1998
Brastel made an agreement with KDDI (formerly KDD), a prominent Japanese telecommunication company allowing Brastel to offer service connections directly from Japan.

In the first half of 2000
The company pioneered lauching an international prepaid card that was rechargeable (customers could instantly replenish their cards) at convenience stores located across the country: the Brastel Smart Phonecard. The product was an instant success in the market and significantly reduced distribution costs. Next, Brastel became one of the first telecom companies in the world to use a paperless payment system to recharge prepaid cards at convenience stores. Developed by NTT Comware, the Smart Pit payment system uses a bar code printed on the card instead of paper coupons. This new system resulted in further cost savings and improved service.

In 2002
Brastel became the first General Type II Carrier (provider of international calls) with a prepaid platform to be interconnected to the Japanese PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), controlled by major carriers such as NTT East, NTT West, NTT Communications and mobile phone operators. This allowed Brastel to effectively monitor the quality of its connections along with the 15 companies with whom it had formed alliances. Due to these new partnerships, Brastel was able to exercise greater control over routing, line cost, and quality of connections. This also enabled Brastel to create its own direct prefix numbers: 0091-20 and 0091-21 (to be announced). The new prefix gave customers the option to make international calls at even lower rates than offered before, with domestic charges included and the convenience of one-step-dialing.

In November of 2003
Brastel improved its CRM and switches to increase flexibility and stability in order to better track its increasing number of calls. Today, the company provides connections to 240 countries and territories and offers customer service in more than 20 languages. The Brastel Smart Phonecard is found in 3,000 distribution points and 5,500 convenience stores throughout Japan.


[edit] Marketing Strategy

Brastel’s marketing strategy is built on targeting the unique needs of the more than 20 sub-communities it services. Brastel advertises in the most influential foreign media channels, developing campaigns in several languages for TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and billboards. The company also sponsors events at international festivals, top foreign schools and various activities in the numerous communities it serves.

Moreover, the company also maintains a network of over 3.000 distribution points in several foreign communities throughout the country. This has earned Brastel significant positive media attention for its international outreach and public services as well as for its high quality services.

More details here.

[edit] Customer Service

[edit] Available languages

(as of September 2006)

[edit] Automated Customer Services

[edit] Brastel 24hs

Speed and convenience are synonymous of Brastel 24 hours—a multilingual automatic answering service—in which customers have access to services at any time, day or night.

[edit] Brastel CyberService

Through Brastel Cyberservice you have access to many services offered by Brastel. Registering and customizing your card, checking your card's balance and call history, adding phone numbers you call frequently to our Speed Dial feature, and ordering payment coupons are some of the services available on this site.


[edit] External links

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