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Zeals

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About Zeals

Tokyo

51-200

? - ? JPY

Zeals is transforming how companies do customer service using technology. Their top-rated chat commerce tools are designed to help clients provide digital "Omotenashi", Japan's highly-prized brand of hospitality.

Chat Commerce

The “Zeals" service lets users purchase and reserve products while talking with an AI chat bot. The goal is simple: to “revolutionize hospitality on the Internet”.

By integrating directly into chat apps like LINE and Facebook, Zeals unlocks digital customer service experiences that were limited to physical stores previously. By allowing customers to converse about their purchase before making it, they’ve been able to increase the purchase rate by about 5 times.

Their service has already been widely adopted in industries like travel, cosmetics and fintech. And they’ve already helped around 400 companies increase their sales.

In Japan, chatbots are still perceived as a tool for automating customer support, but more companies have been using them for marketing and commerce tasks as well (especially overseas).

China’s hyper-popular “Wechat” has over 8 million chatbots in use for marketing purposes, and there’s a “Conversational Commerce” movement happening in the US as well, with a growing number of services using chat bots for marketing. Zeals is the first solution in Japan to offer “purchase through conversation”.

Tackling a billion-dollar e-commerce trend

Zeals is the #1 Japanese conversational commerce solution, driving a 9.6% average conversion rate across over 1.5 million monthly active users. Using AI-powered, human-designed conversation flows in Instagram DMs and LINE chat, Zeals enables brands to build personalized, automated conversations with their consumers and develop a deeper understanding of their preferences while creating a delightful, seamless shopping experience.

The company has big plans: they’re hoping to expand to foreign markets, add voice features. The combination of their “chat commerce” tech and their communication designer expertise unlock a myriad of possibilities for future expansion. Their ultimate goal is to share Japan’s prized “Omotenashi” culture with the world and enable people to forge new connections with one another. They plan to keep developing new products in service to this vision.

Culture

To make this technological revolution necessary, Zeals is investing in people. They entrust their members with a high degree of autonomy and believe strongly in the need for a deep understanding of technology. The company raised 1.8 billion yen in funding in April 2021, and they’re planning to use these funds to continue their aggressive investment in both technology and people. They’re hoping to double the size of their engineering team in the next year.

Zeals has a highly unique culture among Japanese companies. They eschew the traditional hierarchical system in favor of a work style that emphasizes what people can do. They proactively give opportunities to those who are capable and motivated, and they’re not concerned with things like working hours or age.

They offer a flat hierarchy with a truly diverse group of members, including people coming from over 18 countries. Their work environment is flexible, allowing members to choose their own hours and work 100% remotely if they wish. They also have a culture that embraces new technologies, so they’ve gathered quite a few tech aficionados.

If this culture of a global, engineering-driven company resonates with you, then Zeals wants you to join their team!

Zeals' policies during COVID-19 are as follows:

Overseas candidates are welcome to apply — and can even continue working from abroad!
There are currently no meetings that require your physical presence (especially during COVID-19)
For anyone who does relocate to Japan during COVID-19, Zeals will cover any costs for quarantining, testing etc.

Japanese Language Policy
At Zeals, the developers use primarily English (dev-related discussions happen in English on Github or Slack). There might be occasional discussions in Japanese, but most Slack messages are in English (or both languages).

As for meetings, all dev-related ones take place in English. In the past they used Japanese at times, but now they have a clear policy to use English since they have several members who don’t speak Japanese.

Given the above, Japanese skills are not required for engineers. But one unique aspect of the culture at Zeals is that many Japanese members are working on their English while many non-Japanese members also work to improve their Japanese skills.

Since before Zeals was focused on global expansion, around 40% of their members were non-Japanese but most spoke Japanese fluently. In order to build a truly global team, these multilingual members will typically help out when communication is needed between people who don’t speak a common language. In this fashion, Zeals has slowly been turning English into their official language for engineers.

Even now Zeals has many multilingual members that proactively support the rest of the team to ensure smooth communications.

Even outside of the development team, important company-wide announcements are made in both English and Japanese. For example hiring announcements, new product launches etc. they’re announced in both Japanese and English.

Also, they provide simultaneous interpretation for presentations at their monthly all-hands meetings, among other tactics to ensure that everyone gets the information they need.
Paid Leave
- All Japanese public holidays off
- 10 days of PTO (awarded 3 months after joining)
- Summer holiday, Year-end holiday, Childcare leave, Congratulations/Bereavement leave
Benefits
Here are some examples of the benefits which full-time employees can receive.

💻 Preferred laptop provided

👩‍🏫 Language Learning Support (Language courses)

🇯🇵 Translation support (EN<>JP)

👶 Shorter work hours for employees taking care of children

👶 Parental Leave

👕 Flexible dress code

🏠 Rent allowance

💜 Social security / insurance benefits included

🏥 Healthcare insurance, Periodic health checks

💚 Pension insurance

🚃 Commuter allowance
Remote Work
Zeals allows their members to work remotely from anywhere in the world.
- Once COVID-19 is no longer a concern, those that are able to can join their monthly all-hands meetings in person. But people are also free to join via video chat.
- In case of working remotely from outside of Japan, you’ll work as a contract employee (due to limitations around local Japan taxes etc). Upon moving to Japan, you’ll switch to being a full-time employee.
Work style
Zeals is flexible when it comes to working hours. They work on a flex time system with core time of 1:00PM to 3:00PM.
Values

FROM ZEAL

< Passion > Good things come from giving it your all

BET ON PARADOX

< Unorthodox > Never settle for the established norm

UNITED WILL

< Team > Teamwork is the heart of achievement

Office

The Zeals office is situated a 4-minute walk from Gotanda station in Tokyo. They have a free address system where people can work wherever they’d like, as well as meeting rooms. They provide everyone with their preferred hardware and have Ergohuman chairs. Everyone is free to choose the work style that works best for them, either full-remote or using the office.

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Japanese Language Policy
At Zeals, the developers use primarily English (dev-related discussions happen in English on Github or Slack). There might be occasional discussions in Japanese, but most Slack messages are in English (or both languages).

As for meetings, all dev-related ones take place in English. In the past they used Japanese at times, but now they have a clear policy to use English since they have several members who don’t speak Japanese.

Given the above, Japanese skills are not required for engineers. But one unique aspect of the culture at Zeals is that many Japanese members are working on their English while many non-Japanese members also work to improve their Japanese skills.

Since before Zeals was focused on global expansion, around 40% of their members were non-Japanese but most spoke Japanese fluently. In order to build a truly global team, these multilingual members will typically help out when communication is needed between people who don’t speak a common language. In this fashion, Zeals has slowly been turning English into their official language for engineers.

Even now Zeals has many multilingual members that proactively support the rest of the team to ensure smooth communications.

Even outside of the development team, important company-wide announcements are made in both English and Japanese. For example hiring announcements, new product launches etc. they’re announced in both Japanese and English.

Also, they provide simultaneous interpretation for presentations at their monthly all-hands meetings, among other tactics to ensure that everyone gets the information they need.
Paid Leave
- All Japanese public holidays off
- 10 days of PTO (awarded 3 months after joining)
- Summer holiday, Year-end holiday, Childcare leave, Congratulations/Bereavement leave
Benefits
Here are some examples of the benefits which full-time employees can receive.

💻 Preferred laptop provided

👩‍🏫 Language Learning Support (Language courses)

🇯🇵 Translation support (EN<>JP)

👶 Shorter work hours for employees taking care of children

👶 Parental Leave

👕 Flexible dress code

🏠 Rent allowance

💜 Social security / insurance benefits included

🏥 Healthcare insurance, Periodic health checks

💚 Pension insurance

🚃 Commuter allowance
Remote Work
Zeals allows their members to work remotely from anywhere in the world.
- Once COVID-19 is no longer a concern, those that are able to can join their monthly all-hands meetings in person. But people are also free to join via video chat.
- In case of working remotely from outside of Japan, you’ll work as a contract employee (due to limitations around local Japan taxes etc). Upon moving to Japan, you’ll switch to being a full-time employee.
Work style
Zeals is flexible when it comes to working hours. They work on a flex time system with core time of 1:00PM to 3:00PM.
Values

FROM ZEAL

< Passion > Good things come from giving it your all

BET ON PARADOX

< Unorthodox > Never settle for the established norm

UNITED WILL

< Team > Teamwork is the heart of achievement

Office

The Zeals office is situated a 4-minute walk from Gotanda station in Tokyo. They have a free address system where people can work wherever they’d like, as well as meeting rooms. They provide everyone with their preferred hardware and have Ergohuman chairs. Everyone is free to choose the work style that works best for them, either full-remote or using the office.