One of the biggest troubles facing young people who have just started living on their own is that they cannot wake up in the morning. As many as 66.5% of young people are worried about this issue (survey by au). As a mobile phone company that prides itself on being a friend to young people through student discounts and other services, au mobile came up with a solution as only a mobile phone company could, to relieve them of this worry and to foster a better relationship with young people.

Among young people, 80.3% responded that “I use my mobile phone instead of an alarm clock to wake up.” For “The person who best knows how to wake me up,” the most common response was their mother at 77.8%. Likewise, for “The person I can count on most when I can’t afford to oversleep the next day,” the most common response was their mother at 73.3%. It was based on this data (survey by au) that au mobile opened a call center of mothers and started providing a wake-up call service for young people.

The mothers were chosen from ordinary women with actual parenting experience. As professionals in waking up their sons and daughters, they had sophisticated communication skills that apply to all wake-up styles as well as a caring heart and a sense of humor. To make mobile phone calls a service in themselves and through that improve our brand image is also the aspiration of au as a mobile phone company.

The young users can choose the mother to wake them up from a roster of idiosyncratic mothers. They can be chosen based on their birthplace and dialect, and come with a snooze function to make sure the wake up is successful. The service has been reported in newspapers, on TV, on the radio, and numerous other media outlets as well as was shared on social media. Typically, no more than 3% of the comments were negative (survey by au).

Most meaningful for au as a mobile phone company was that people could rediscover the kindness of a person waking up someone else, the warmth of a person waking up to someone else’s voice, and the value of real communication. Among the young people, there were those who rediscovered the power of communication, for example by renewing their gratitude toward others or calling their real mothers for the first time in a while. Many of the mothers also came to empathize with their “sons and daughters.”