AIさくらさん
: How to use it, features, and the business problems it solves
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What is AIさくらさん?
An AI conversation series for businesses and local governments from 株式会社ティファナ・ドットコム (Tifana.com; Meguro, Tokyo; part of the HEROZ group). It offers a product for each customer touchpoint and task, including "AI電話対応さくらさん" (AI phone answering) for first-line calls, reservations and handoffs, "AIチャットボットさくらさん" and "社内問い合わせさくらさん" for website and internal inquiries, and "アバター接客さくらさん" for avatar guidance on signage in stations and facilities. Hand over your documents and a dedicated team supports setup through ongoing operation. Deployed at major JR East stations, the Supreme Court of Japan and local governments. Pricing is an initial fee plus a monthly fee; amounts are provided on request.
Business problems it solves
About "AIさくらさん"
What is AIさくらさん?
AIさくらさん (AI Sakura-san) is an AI conversation (AI agent) series for businesses and local governments provided by 株式会社ティファナ・ドットコム (Tifana.com; Meguro, Tokyo). There is a separate "… Sakura-san" product for each touchpoint, such as phone, website chat, and digital signage (avatars) in stations and facilities, and the AI takes on first-line inquiries, reservations, and facility guidance.
The service launched in October 2016 and marked its 10th anniversary in October 2026. The official website shows deployments such as guidance at major JR East stations, inquiry handling on the website of the Supreme Court of Japan, and local government service counters. Tifana.com has been part of the group of HEROZ, Inc. (a listed company in Japan) since March 2024.
AIさくらさん is not a single product
AIさくらさん is a family of products split by touchpoint and task. The product list on the official website groups them into four lines (as of October 2026; the 10th-anniversary announcement describes "19 services").
01Phone
The AI answers calls, understands the request, and handles answers, reservations, and handoffs.
- AI電話対応さくらさん — automates reservations, first-line responses, and transfers
- クリニックさくらさん — handles booking and cancellation calls for clinics
- カスハラ対策さくらさん — the AI takes inappropriate inquiries and complaint calls
- 見守りさくらさん / Marine Sakura — check-in calls for family members; calls and onboard announcements for ferries and ports
02Chatbot
Text-based answers to website and internal inquiries.
- AIチャットボットさくらさん — website inquiries, connecting answers to reservations and procedures
- 社内問い合わせさくらさん — first-line responses to IT and general affairs questions
- 営業さくらさん / メンタルヘルスさくらさん — sales on your behalf; mental health care
03Avatar and remote service
An avatar on signage in stations, shopping facilities, or receptions guides people by voice and on screen.
- アバター接客さくらさん — facility guidance, store suggestions, handoff to staff
- 受付さくらさん — visitor reception at offices and notifying the person in charge
- マイナンバーさくらさん — guidance for procedures at municipal counters
04Industry-specific DX
Products tailored to specific tasks.
- AIエージェントさくらさん — proposing and carrying out AI use for your work
- 落とし物管理さくらさん — registering and looking up lost items
- 面接サポートさくらさん / ワークフローさくらさん / おでかけモビさくらさん — interview support, approval workflows, itinerary adjustment
This page focuses on the three most-used lines: phone, chat, and avatar.
How to use it
Tifana.com supports you from setup through operation. The official page for AIチャットボットさくらさん describes the following flow.
- Request documents or consult: Choose a product on the official form and download the materials (price list) or send an inquiry. Pricing is provided at this stage
- Hand over manuals and FAQs: Provide internal manuals, FAQ collections, and product materials as they are, in PDF, Word, or Excel. According to the company, there is no need to register Q&As one by one
- Learning and tuning: The AI is prepared to answer based on the materials, and a dedicated customer success (CS) team checks the content and tunes accuracy
- Go live: Tifana.com handles setup, testing, and publication. The chatbot can go live in as little as one month, and the internal helpdesk is described as taking about one month to prepare
- Operation and improvement: After launch, the dedicated CS team continues to check answer accuracy, add and fix FAQs, deliver monthly usage reports, and suggest improvements
For phone answering, what to answer and when to pass a call to a person is designed according to a response policy agreed with the customer's managers. For avatar service, the guidance content and hardware configuration are proposed according to where it will be installed (a corporate reception or a shopping facility).
Phone calls are not just answered; reservations and handoffs are carried through
AI電話対応さくらさん (AI phone answering) picks up the call, understands the request, answers according to company policy, and passes only what is necessary to a person with a summary of the key points. The main functions listed on the official page are:
- Accepting reservations, changes, and cancellations (checking availability and confirming the booking during the call)
- Automatic answering at night, on holidays, and in foreign languages
- Automatic call recording and transcription, with notifications to Slack, LINE, and more
- Handling multiple simultaneous calls; listing calls that need a callback and calling back automatically
- Sending booking URLs or maps by SMS to guide callers to online procedures
- No-code editing of the conversation flow (scenario) by rewriting text on screen
The FAQ explains that the system can be designed so that important decisions, urgent matters, and strong complaints are passed to staff. In October 2026, Chosei Village in Chiba Prefecture announced that it had introduced AI電話対応さくらさん to handle calls during large events.
Chat answers from the documents you provide, and passes what it can't answer to a person
AIチャットボットさくらさん (AI chatbot) answers website inquiries 24 hours a day and connects answers to reservations and procedures. According to the company, it answers within the scope of pre-registered information and hands questions it cannot answer over to live chat. It integrates with CRMs such as Salesforce, kintone, and HubSpot, works on LINE and Instagram, and finds "questions it could not answer" in the logs and proposes draft answers.
For internal use, 社内問い合わせさくらさん (internal helpdesk) takes first-line questions to IT and general affairs, such as password resets and application procedures, and passes on anything that needs a staff member's review. The company says it integrates with Slack and Teams so that answers and even document creation can be done within the conversation.
Leaving station and facility guidance to talking signage
アバター接客さくらさん (avatar service) is a product in which an avatar on signage guides people by voice and with text, maps, and images. At a corporate reception it asks visitors their purpose and directs them to the reception desk or meeting room; at a shopping facility it asks about dining and shopping preferences and suggests stores. It supports multilingual guidance and handoff to staff, and usage and estimated response time can be checked in monthly reports.
At Nankai Electric Railway, signage was placed in a station, and AIさくらさん handled transfer, station-area, and sightseeing guidance while answers and guidance were verified (case study on the official アバター接客さくらさん page).
AIさくらさん started in 2016 with web guidance, began signage-based guidance in response to demand for multilingual guidance at transportation hubs, and added touchless operation and avatar service from 2020 onward.
Features
01Responding
- First-line response and handoff — answers common questions by phone, chat, and signage, and passes decisions to people
- Reservations and procedures — accepts bookings, changes, and cancellations directly from phone or chat
- Multilingual — foreign-language calls and multilingual guidance in facilities (supported scope confirmed at deployment)
02Integrations
- CRM and core systems — links conversation content with Salesforce, kintone, HubSpot, and more
- Notifications and channels — notifications and handoffs to Slack, LINE, and Teams; SMS sending
03Operation
- Learning from documents — prepares answers from PDF, Word, Excel, and YouTube videos
- Dedicated CS team — continuous accuracy checks, FAQ additions and fixes, and improvement proposals
- Usage reports — monthly reports on usage and impact
Pricing
AIさくらさん is priced as an initial fee plus a monthly fee, and the amounts are not published on the official website. Pricing for each product is provided by downloading the materials (price list) or by inquiry.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Pricing structure | Initial fee + monthly fee (amounts provided via document request or inquiry) |
| Included in the monthly fee | System usage fee, support fee (unlimited support), version upgrades (irregular), data backup |
| Avatar service | Initial setup, hardware, installation, and monthly operation are quoted separately. Add-ons such as reception system or payment integration are quoted individually |
| Contract term | 12 months from the start of the contract, automatically renewed for 12 months at a time unless written notice of termination is given at least one month before expiry (Terms of Service) |
| Data after termination | Stored for 20 days after the contract ends, then deleted (Terms of Service) |
The official website does not mention a free plan or free trial (pages such as 受付さくらさん offer a "free consultation").
Security and data handling
Tifana.com holds ISO/IEC 27001 (obtained March 2016), ISO/IEC 27017 for cloud service security (obtained October 2020), and ISO 9001 (obtained March 2012) for its Tokyo head office, and has made a self-declaration of conformity with ISO 10002. The company states that it complies with the "AI Guidelines for Business" issued by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and Digital Agency.
Regarding the use of generative AI, the official website states that it "does not learn from entered questions without permission," "issues an alert when personal information is entered," and "masks input information." The company also lists five AI-related patents, covering areas such as goods and service delivery devices with dialogue functions, interview support, and lost-item management.
Case studies and reputation
The official case list includes names from railways, government agencies, local governments, commercial facilities, and companies.
01Railways and transportation
- JR East — guidance on transfers, station premises, nearby facilities, and sightseeing at major stations such as Tokyo, Shinagawa, and Shibuya
- Nankai Electric Railway — transfer and sightseeing guidance with information shared with Kintetsu Railway
- MOL Sunflower — chat answers to questions about fares and booking, reducing phone inquiries
02Government and municipalities
- Supreme Court of Japan — web guidance on how to use the civil court document e-filing system "mints"
- Saga and Toyama Prefectures, etc. — guidance on prefectural websites; LINE integration for relocation consultations
- Chosei Village, Chiba — AI電話対応さくらさん for calls during events (announced October 2026)
03Companies and commercial facilities
- Seven & i Holdings — customer guidance in four languages
- Daiei — internal inquiries from headquarters and stores nationwide
- Nishikawa — bedding inquiries handled outside business hours
The AIチャットボットさくらさん page also introduces anonymized cases, such as "a retail chain that cut phone handling from 5 minutes per call to an average of 1.8 minutes" and "a cosmetics mail-order company that cut about 5 million yen per year after relying on an outsourced call center costing 6 million yen per year" (both as published on the official website).
How it differs from other customer support AI
What sets AIさくらさん apart is that a single company offers products for every touchpoint—phone, chat, and avatar signage—and that a dedicated team is expected to handle operation after deployment. This changes how it should be compared with products focused only on chatbots or automated phone answering.
| Product | Main touchpoints | Pricing (public information) | Characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIさくらさん | Phone, chat, avatar (signage) | Initial fee + monthly (provided individually) | Product family by touchpoint and task. Hand over documents and a dedicated CS team runs operations |
| KARAKURI | Chat, operator support | GeN from 500,000 yen initial + from 400,000 yen/month | AI agents specialized in customer support and an in-house LLM |
| PKSHA ChatAgent | Chat | Not published (contact for pricing) | AI carries out everything from analyzing unresolved cases to proposing improvements |
| Support Chatbot | Chat | Initial + monthly (not published; contact for pricing) | User Local's NLP plus generative AI. Dedicated team support included; LGWAN supported |
| IVRy | Phone | Free plan from 0 yen/month; paid plans from 3,980 yen/month (excl. tax) | Automated phone answering. Start with the free plan and deploy by forwarding your current number |
Details for other products are as of the check date stated on each product page.
If you want to start small with phone only, consider IVRy; if you want to center on website chat and keep improving FAQs, KARAKURI and PKSHA ChatAgent are candidates. If you want to leave everything, including in-person guidance at stations and facilities, to one company, AIさくらさん is worth considering.
FAQ
How much does AIさくらさん cost?
It is priced as an initial fee plus a monthly fee, and the amounts are not published. Choose a product on the official form and download the price list or send an inquiry. The monthly fee includes system usage, unlimited support, version upgrades, and data backup.
Can individuals use it?
It is a corporate service for businesses and local governments. The Terms of Service set a 12-month contract term (automatically renewed).
How long does deployment take?
AIチャットボットさくらさん can go live in as little as one month, and 社内問い合わせさくらさん is described as taking about one month to prepare. Tifana.com handles setup, testing, and publication.
What happens if the AI gives incorrect guidance?
The official pages explain that it answers within the scope of pre-registered information and can be designed to pass unanswerable questions and matters requiring judgment to a person.
The information on this page is based on what was published on the official website as of October 2026. Please check the official website for the latest specifications and pricing.
