Author: Ling Min

At the recently concluded 2021 Chengdu Auto Show, there was a group of people shuttling among the various exhibition stands of Great Wall Motors. They were neither consumers who came to see cars, nor employees of various auto companies, but they were wearing uniform clothes, patiently explaining the performance of vehicles and sharing their experiences in buying and choosing cars to the on-site audience. They are a volunteer team composed of Great Wall Motors car owners.

A year ago, the Haval owner volunteer team under Great Wall Motors was established in Chengdu, and then Ora, Pika and Tank successively set up volunteer teams. Their figures have appeared in several major auto shows and other user activities of Great Wall Motors in China, becoming the vanguard force of user operation for Great Wall Motors. This is also an important step taken in the direction of user operation since Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, proposed the strategic goal of evolving into a user-based enterprise in 2020.

“Bring like-minded people together to do something with temperature, let everyone feel the culture of the Great Wall Motors brand up close.” This is the original intention of the establishment of the Great Wall Motors car owner volunteer team and also the epitome of the “user-centric” concept of Great Wall Motors. Based on this concept, every Great Wall user will be able to realize and amplify his or her own value in Great Wall Motors’ user ecological system, and an internally-formed driving force facing user feedback can also promote the continuous improvement of products.

Concept-oriented user brand system construction
In the past year, Great Wall Motors has jointly completed one breakthrough and growth after another with car owner volunteers. The scale of the car owner volunteer team continues to expand, the forms of activities are more diversified, and user participation has also significantly increased. From auto show services, Spring Festival love station, to car owner modification experts, and then to social welfare activities such as caring for autistic children, Great Wall Motors’ user operation team, together with car owners, has gradually built a strong and united user group while contributing to society.

If the Great Wall Motors car owner volunteer system construction is the foothold of its user thought revolution, the “Spark 2021 Plan” is the guiding light for Great Wall Motors to evolve towards user-based enterprises.# “Spark 2021 Plan” released at “Haval User Creation Summit”. The plan is aimed at various brands under Great Wall Motors. Based on user value incentive system and user growth system, the plan consists of four major initiatives: product co-creation, service co-creation, reputation co-creation, and business sharing. The goal is to build a user brand system, thus achieving the two-way improvement of user value and brand value, and ultimately completing the transformation of Great Wall Motors from a product-oriented enterprise to a user-oriented enterprise.

During the Chengdu Auto Show, the “Spark Plan-Talent Hands-On Workshop” of Great Wall Motors gathered more than 20 car enthusiasts, held co-creation salons, and continued to strengthen communication and emotional connections with users, making users the cornerstone of co-creation.

The key point of successful transformation into a user-centered enterprise lies in whether it can truly change its thinking mode and form a closer symbiotic relationship with users in the ecological system. For a considerable period of time in the past, traditional automotive companies regarded users as their gods, improving user operations as a marketing method, and sales conversion as a performance index. In the end, this was a “materialized” user thinking. In the view of Great Wall Motors, the new generation of users is more like the company’s family and friends. Their expectations of car companies are no longer limited to being just providers of products and services, but rather partners who can deeply understand their needs and realize them. This shift in thinking that emanates from the underlying philosophy has given the construction of Great Wall Motors’ user brand system a broader space.

Great Wall Motors’ User Ecological System Is Preliminary

Easier said than done. Having the change in thinking ideology makes it easy to establish a platform, but how to make users feel engaged, really attract users to become friends of the enterprise, achieve efficient communication between the enterprise and users, and for traditional car companies with basic several million or even tens of millions of users, this is undoubtedly a great challenge.

The first step in Great Wall Motors’ efforts to create a user ecological system is to start from the internal mechanisms. In 2020, Great Wall Motors spent four months building a new user-centered organizational structure in fields such as products, technology, and marketing.

Great Wall Motors’ user operation strategy and path have gradually emerged. The work of Great Wall Motors’ user operation is orderly carried out from constantly deepening the connection with users, to continuously consolidating the relationship with users, to achieving multi-dimensional symbiosis and co-creation with users, thus building Great Wall Motors’ user ecological system.In the process of building the two supporting systems of user value incentive and user growth, Great Wall Motors clearly recognizes its good promotion role in user loyalty and activity. Through the various brand apps as carriers, the company designs incentive mechanisms and growth tasks that are of interest to users in different circles based on differentiated material and spiritual needs, striving to stimulate users’ initiative and creativity from the bottom.

To truly implement user thinking and break the “dimension wall” between the enterprise and users, in addition to company mechanism construction and system support, it is more important to rely on user-driven feedback.

Great Wall Motors invites more professional users through product experience officers, user expert pools, executive caravans, and technical expert salon activities to deepen understanding of users’ needs and expectations of the products, forming product co-creation between the company and users. Inviting users to supervise and participate in service co-creation through the service experience officer program and the same city service mutual assistance platform, both parties work together to build a car life that meets users’ needs. This allows users to feel that Great Wall Motors is no longer just a product delivery entity, but the beginning of a new way of life, just like making a good friend and having more colorful and entertaining opportunities in life.

Friends treat each other with sincerity and respond to each other in unison. Great Wall Motors invites users to participate in the co-creation of products and services with an open attitude, and users respond with enthusiasm. Since the launch of the company’s Volunteer Program for Car Owners, over 400 car owners have joined in just one year. Some car owners have even become content partners with Great Wall Motors, sharing their own stories about themselves and their cars on various social media platforms. Experiencing better and better products and services, Great Wall Motors’ users voluntarily become brand ambassadors and work with the company to create brand reputation.

While solidifying user relationships and forming “friendships” with users, Great Wall Motors also has a more far-reaching plan–to prioritize providing business opportunities to users, creating a platform for users to share business opportunities with each other and developing them into “partners”. This shared business opportunity measure not only builds a new form of business ecology between the company and users but also constructs a business ecology between users through open capabilities.

Bottom-up thinking changes lead Great Wall Motors’ evolution.In 2020, Mr. Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, published his insights on “Thirty Years of Car Making”, discussing that the future car-making concept will focus more on users and their travel experiences, and users will become the fundamental basis for the survival of car companies. Today, Great Wall Motors has gradually completed the transformation of its fundamental thinking and constructed a blueprint for its user ecosystem, and its initiatives to create the ultimate user experience have also achieved initial success. Great Wall Motors has essentially stepped out of the category of creating a better car usage experience for users and presented a spirited attitude of leading users to create and play together.

Truly considering users as family and friends, creating real value for users, and users will certainly give positive feedback. Whether it is the Haval brand’s vote for naming a new car, ORA’s creation of the “world’s favorite women’s car brand”, or Tank’s invitation to users to become co-creation officials in the “Ark Navigation Plan”, topics related to Great Wall Motors continue to generate high levels of discussion. At the same time, it is also achieving a dual transformation of both brand awareness and sales for Great Wall Motors.

Great Wall Motors is undoubtedly at the forefront of the transformation from a traditional car company to a user-oriented enterprise. Although this road of exploration may be full of obstacles, from the layout of Great Wall Motors’ user operation, we can see its firm confidence and vision for the future. From caring about making good cars to focusing more on people and users’ travel experiences, it is not a one-sided slogan of the enterprise, only through mutual engagement can meaningful changes be made and miracles can be achieved. The pattern of the future automotive industry is still constantly changing, and what can ultimately advance further is companies like Great Wall Motors that are able to jointly convey new values with users.

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.