This article is reproduced from the autocarweekly WeChat public account.
Author: Karakush
The reforming spring breeze has brought about a number of user-centered car companies.
Especially the batch of new car makers who emerged last year. Although they don’t have many users, they are doing a lot: in addition to shouting slogans and setting up specialized departments for “user operations,” they also engage in direct sales, apps, points, equity, various offline activities, and invite users to come and guide their work.
Their every move reminds people of the advanced fighter of user-centered car companies, NIO, as they have even adopted some of NIO’s style – the team will always have faces that previously belonged to NIO.
When introducing these companies, this background will be emphasized, just like in the past, when engineers were poached from Pan Asia, and now programmers are poached from Tesla and XPeng, not just to provide technical support, but to shine. Some companies even make it clear to recruiters that having worked at NIO is a prerequisite for employment.
“Indeed, there are some competitors who come to poach our employees,” said Shen Hong, head of user relations at NIO, “but overall, it’s okay. We don’t believe that user-centered car companies can be easily replicated by just poaching a few people.”
Calmness must be serious.
From the current situation, besides NIO, no one else has a “user-centered car company” label that is established, let alone sustainable. Not to mention the misunderstandings and short-term setbacks encountered in dealing with users, what is even more apparent is that even a copy to the pixel level is hopeless.
Some friends summarize the desperate difference between them as Li Bin.
The thickness of NIO’s users is to some extent due to Li Bin’s personal charm. This spiritual mentor of user-centered car companies has his own star halo that cannot be replicated: a ruthless serial start-up machine, the godfather of travel, the Wall Street wolf, the factory director who beat Porsche, the most miserable person of 2019, the pride of Hefei… Even his buzzed haircut is more stylish than that of most leaders.
Even today, the same simple truth, expressed in his language, is more marketable and influential. Having Li Bin is more advantageous than having 80 million in 2017.
Many carmakers have tried to create their own founders’ star image, but most have given up, some want to take a chance, but the overall situation is quite desperate. What can you do, even if you poach the entire user operations department? You still can’t bring Li Bin with you.
So, does not having Li Bin mean they are not eligible to run a user-centered car company?
Seeing the Essence through Li Bin
We don’t have a clear concept of “user-centered car companies.” We only remember stories like:
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Li Bin sends red packets in the owner’s group every day;
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Li Bin and Qin Lihong answer car owners’ questions on the app late at night;
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Li Bin set up a user trust with 50 million of his shares;
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Li Bin got drunk again at the owners’ party;
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Li Bin stood at the car show for seven consecutive days to receive users;
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Li Bin enjoys with car owners in a variety of costumes.
It is difficult to be called a business model, but these stories do outline our first impressions of “user enterprise”, distinguishing NIO from other companies. The hallmark of this is whether there is subjective initiative to satisfy or even create emotional needs of users.
In terms of threshold, there is no threshold.
First, there is no need for “personal image”. For the user, it doesn’t matter who they deal with. For example, when the first batch of Gaohe was delivered, many owners were touched by the fact that Ding Lei and other executives came to deliver the car and stayed to have dinner, drinks and make friends with the owners. At this moment, the user enterprise experience that Gaohe owners feel is not worse than NIO owners.
Second, there is no need for “tactics”, just simply making users feel valued, which is relatively easy to achieve in the automotive industry, as the standard that Chinese car owners are satisfied with is very low. My father has always thought that Audi provides superior service for many years, but in reality, it’s just the manager coming out to chat with him over tea every time he goes for maintenance.
The threshold lies in how to maximize granularity and popularity.
A while ago, on a Saturday, I went to observe NIO’s candidate city presentation for NIO Day this year, which lasted from 10 am to 4:30 pm. In addition to the user organizing committee, the NIO team including Li Bin and Qin Lihong were also present. The high-level setup itself was surprising to me.
It’s not easy to go up, and it’s even more tiring to be dedicated.
What impressed me was that there was a NIO owner named Dayu in Changsha who suddenly asked, “I sang a song at NIO Day, do you remember me, Bin Ge?” Li Bin thought for half a second and said, “No, it wasn’t at NIO Day, you sang the song at the annual meeting.”
Not only Li Bin, but also the friends of the NIO User Club remember the high-blur faces transmitted by Zoom. Each face is not an abstract user portrait, but an old friend full of vivid memories.
After the agenda, the NIO team did not rest for long. Li Bin immediately organized another meeting, discussing the next steps and, more importantly, how to console the cities that were not selected.
User enterprise is a system that finds things and rolls up a snowball. Doing one thing leads to eight hundred more. You have to give it your all at every stage, not just the boss impressing China, but the entire team’s support. The team not only needs to complete the main business of setting the framework but also needs to continually give surprises.
Most of NIO’s impressive cases are beyond the scope of ordinary work and require a lot of personal time and emotion. The bosses’ spiritual pursuit comes from personal ideals, and workers who work with their hearts must have some other things to give.# NIO’s Core Values: The Driving Force Behind a User-Centered Company
When asked how to run a user-centered company, Qin Lihong, the CEO of NIO, always emphasizes that the key is to discuss values, not techniques. As a value-based company, NIO’s underlying values determine its overall structure.
Many companies can build a well-organized structure and business, but still fail to provide an excellent user experience. To enable all members of an organization to fully appreciate core values and to work towards achieving them requires more than just talking from leaders during meetings. It requires repeated guidance and systemic support.
Qin Lihong has mentioned that NIO provides immediate material and spiritual recognition for employees who provide outstanding service to its users. Although it may sound simple, this approach poses significant management challenges. Trusting the team, recognizing the right people, preventing opportunism and discouraging those who are not contributing positively are key to motivating employees to actively embody the company’s values.
NIO is not just about awarding good performance to employees; it also focuses on developing a positive work culture. Their employee value index comprehensive assesses employee’s core values of sincerity, care, foresight, and action. This assessment is not linked to immediate work outcomes but is a tool for examining the degree of alignment between employees’ values and the company’s values. NIO also seeks to expand the internal impact of these values. For example, they encourage employees to post articles on their internal social media platform, praising colleagues who demonstrate alignment with the company’s core values, with points-based prizes available. Additionally, the company runs a morning broadcast known as “858 morning meeting” every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 8:58 am, where employees hear inspiring stories that reflect NIO’s core values.
Of course, the best way to lead a user-centered company is to set an example from the top. NIO’s founders, Li Bin and Qin Lihong, lead by action rather than mere words. The company’s mission and operational guidelines are both focused on their users. NIO has managed to instill a sense of purpose in many of its employees, which is highly valued in the workplace.
Many onlookers perceive NIO as a brainwashing organization, primarily due to its significant investment in providing high-quality service, similar to that of China’s Haidilao restaurant chain. However, they overlook a significant aspect of NIO’s philosophy: the energy replenishment system, which is the core of the company’s user-centered business framework.
When it comes to a user-centered enterprise, NIO has established both user development and user operation departments. However, even research and development departments must be viewed as a user department since they also include essential positions such as experience managers, who work closely with users. For example, the “mileage worry-free experience manager” is responsible for the overall experience of the company’s charging stations, including swapping stations, energy replenishment maps, home charging, and more.
NIO’s approach is, therefore, not just about spending a lot of money on customer service. Instead, it focuses on establishing a broad network of energy replenishment systems.Electric vehicles have made battery swapping a frequent or even daily after-sales touchpoint. Initially, many “user enterprise” stories were derived from battery swapping services. At NIO, NIO Power has been established as an independent first-level department, which has established a system including vehicles (mobile charging vehicles), poles (charging piles), stations (battery swapping stations), people (teams), and cloud (energy cloud) in order to maximally cover various scenarios to help users eliminate range anxiety.
Last Friday was the third anniversary of NIO Power, and NIO announced its current layout: 301 battery swapping stations, 204 supercharging stations, and 382 destination charging stations have been built nationwide, providing over 2.9 million battery swaps and over 600,000 one-key charging services.
There may still be various dissatisfactions, but the battery swapping experience for NIO users is definitely one of the best on the market (if not the best). They have been striving to improve the experience even before having the current infrastructure.
You must still remember that a few founding users drove their cars from Guangzhou to Xinjiang three years ago. At that time, NIO had only delivered thousands of vehicles and had not yet laid out in Xinjiang. Therefore, they used a transportation company’s flatbed trucks to tow mobile charging vehicles en route, and were mocked by the entire Internet.
“I admit this is not the most efficient method,” said Qin Lihong, who cannot forget this incident. “But it is not embarrassing for a company to provide such a service to its users.”
Nowadays, mobile charging vehicles are no longer the main force, but a flexible supplement to fixed facilities, providing reservation and following services. They also have some public welfare properties that surpass many other brands.
Now, the main force is charging and swapping. Especially, swapping is the highlight. Among NIO users, residential areas within 3 kilometers of a battery swapping station are called “Electric Zone Housing”. As of now, 29% of NIO users live in “Electric Zone Housing”, and the goal is for 90% of users to be able to live in “Electric Zone Housing” by 2025.
Specifically, the total number of battery swapping stations is expected to increase from 500 to over 700 this year. From next year to 2025, China will add 600 battery swapping stations every year. By the end of 2025, the total number of battery swapping stations worldwide will exceed 4,000, including approximately 1,000 overseas.
Many friends are still questioning the investment in battery swapping and believe that this is a short-term solution due to insufficient charging technology.But NIO sees it differently. Firstly, charging and swapping are not contradictory. The location is fixed and the power capacity is there, providing the flexibility of bi-directional choice in the future. Secondly, swapping stations are twice as efficient as charging stations in terms of single parking area today, and NIO is confident in achieving more than double the efficiency in the future with 400V800V. “I don’t think we are that incompetent,” said Qin Lihong.
Based on swapping, not only can it complete today’s energy replenishment scenarios – large batteries, supercharging, and free charging – but also swapping is seen as a key technology for the separation of vehicle electricity. This energy replenishment touchpoint can extend into many areas. For example, NIO Summer is currently running a blind box campaign. Over ten weeks, one user will be selected each week to name and specify the location of a swapping station to be built, even under the user’s own building (if conditions permit). Isn’t this fun?
The investment, of course, is huge. But Qin Lihong said, don’t use losses to understand NIO Power. Investment is not a loss. If I were to purchase it myself, it would be even more expensive and wouldn’t meet the requirements. In addition, the more people think I can’t lose this part of the money, the larger my window of opportunity.
Many cases of plagiarism fail because there are two problems. Firstly, they are tongue-tied and don’t know what to do. They try to come up with special cases that look like a collection of shanzhai routines, such as bulk purchases, daily disposables, which are unrealistic in terms of benefits. In fact, by solidly establishing this high-frequency touchpoint of charging and energy replenishment, half of the success has been achieved. NIO’s outstanding case is based on a wide range of endorsements. Those who hand over energy replenishment to “third parties” for charging are not thinking through the necessary touchpoints.
Secondly, they know what to do, but can’t make progress. The difference lies in investment and management, and of course, values. Many friends from traditional enterprises still see user operations as a puzzle piece for branding and marketing departments. After all, traditional enterprises don’t have similar business concepts, such as offline activities, owner clubs, and after-sales service. The status of this type of business is doomed to not have the budget to do anything.
For example, the Service and Energy Assurance products that NIO initially launched were designed by Li Bin. According to 36Kr, the early pricing was supposed to be much higher, but Li Bin requested that the amortization cycle of fixed costs be lengthened and mainly calculated as operating costs. At that time, it was done in a money-losing way. A Service Assurance user loses more than RMB 4,000 per year.
From a traditional perspective, this is an unnecessary overspending that is easy to be classified as a money-burning tactic. But for users and companies, it is a priority-based accounting method that even in the most difficult times, it will not collapse the house. And not making money doesn’t mean that you will never make money.In addition, a flat management structure (up to four levels) combined with digital tools can allow for user demands to be communicated from the bottom up, facilitating rapid feedback reaching the back-end for analysis based on region and online channels. The challenge lies with managers who have wide management responsibilities, with some managers having a management span of up to 1:20, as reported by Boston Consulting Group, presenting high challenges to individual abilities and energy.
Therefore, poaching from NIO is very efficient. The industry’s pain point is the lack of direct talent. Universities cannot teach “user operations,” and experience is more important than diplomas. Kids in college still choose useless things like philosophy. There is no such role in the industry, and there is even the problem of transitioning from one field to another in the internet industry. Thus, preparing experienced people directly may be more effective.
But without a system, it is useless. And without values, it is also not impressive.
User Enterprise is not the only option
Before struggling to establish values, it is worth asking: is User Enterprise the only politically correct option?
Car companies like to see the values that NIO has as a User Enterprise: high recommendation rates, with 69% of NIO’s existing customers recommending it during the pandemic; high user retention, with friends buying up to seven NIO vehicles and exchanging them like socks every week on the app; user reputation and word-of-mouth spreading more effectively than market department advertising and cost-free.
Moreover, there are extensive opportunities to gather high net-worth users, and NIO has successfully overcome critical situations with its private users, such as pulling the company back from the edge of collapse. Private users advertise the product fully, sell much more, work as volunteers, and even someone like Wei Jian, the Vice President of User Operations, works hard to get the job done. Living together in ICU enables the company and users to form a community of shared destiny, which is almost the best state of User Enterprise.
Many people say it is like Hai Di Lao, but it is deeper than Hai Di Lao. People are willing to queue up for two hours at Hai Di Lao, but once they finish eating they quickly forget it, and the waiting two hours are not worth anything else except for free manicures. NIO sells vehicles and lifestyle, and through word of mouth, it can influence people. This power also has many stories to tell in the capital market.
Therefore, many people think that User Enterprise is the trend, that not doing it will lead to death, and that doing it depends on the leader’s willingness.
Actually, this is not the case. Certain objective conditions affect the situation. For example, traditional companies have no way to carry out franchising as users are not in their hands, and it is impossible to transplant teams and architectures forcibly. Similarly, some companies positioned as mass-market brands may find it difficult to maintain profits through user experiences. User Enterprise does not burn money, but it is costly, and high-end brands may face admissibility issues.
Not doing User Enterprise does not mean death. Traditional car companies have their own brand and size advantages, and there are also companies like Tesla that drive product innovation through technology, becoming fortresses.And NIO regards “user experience” as the breakthrough point for overtaking in the fast lane and as the advantage of differentiation competition. However, NIO also has its own problems, such as how to ensure service standards without diluting them as the owner population expands, and how to break through service innovation as user expectations continue to rise. All are exploring to find a way to survive.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.