Author: Qiu Kaijun & Tian Hui

It seems that Voyah is determined to take the “user enterprise” label from NIO.

Take a look at Voyah’s “User Night” in mid-October–huge expenditures, carefully planned, held on the Zhiyin boat on the Yangtze River in Wuhan, and let users be the protagonists. Not to mention these, just talk about a detail:

On that day, Wuhan suddenly cooled down, and all the participating Voyah car owners returned to their hotels and found that Voyah had prepared a cup of warm ginger tea in their rooms.

It’s like your blind date partner took you to a great restaurant, did their best to please you, sent you home, and sent a very sincere good night message before going to bed.

“Just give in.” A voice in your heart said.

Although ginger tea is small, it highlights Voyah’s meticulous customer service. It is obvious that being a user enterprise cannot just be a hollow promise, but rather requires the user’s needs and experiences to be remembered and taken into action.

The thoughtfulness of the ginger tea is not flattery, but rather highlights Voyah’s strong desire to be a “user enterprise.”

Why work so hard? Can’t you make good cars while being aloof? Isn’t making good cars enough?

We interviewed Voyah’s car owners, trying to find the logic of Voyah’s “user enterprise.”

Car Owner Dong: Voyah constantly surprises

Mr. Dong, a former Jeep off-road car owner, has now replaced his car with a Voyah FREE.

When Voyah FREE first began its pre-order showcase, Mr. Dong often participated in Voyah’s activities. From pre-ordering to small and large orders, Mr. Dong has participated in many Voyah car owner activities and has repeatedly enjoyed the additional surprises provided by Voyah.

At the start of the small order, Voyah car owners could enjoy 8 pre-order benefits, among which the lifetime three-electric warranty and lifetime free charging privileges were the most surprising benefits for car owners. During the large order, the Voyah official reduced the value of the previously priced RMB 20,000 and RMB 30,000 value-added packages by RMB 5,000.

Finally, Mr. Dong’s fate with Voyah has been deepened. In early August, Mr. Dong replaced his Jeep with a Voyah FREE. Today, his Voyah FREE has traveled more than 3,000 kilometers. After the car was delivered, what made Mr. Dong most satisfied was the free charging policy that he initially suggested to Voyah, which was eventually adopted.

At the beginning of LanTu’s offer of free charging service, their commitment was to provide car owners with free charging service from their own charging station. However, Mr. Dong suggested if LanTu could add third-party charging stations to provide free charging services, due to the fact that LanTu’s charging stations were not yet completed.

In the end, LanTu improved their free charging service according to the needs of car owners. Currently, LanTu car owners can enjoy 800 kWh of free electricity for charging each month and can also charge for free at third-party charging piles such as the State Grid, Southern Power Grid, and Techrules.

LanTu not only offers car owners the privilege of free charging but also provides supporting services. In the LanTu App, users can rate the charging piles. If a poor rating is given, LanTu staff will immediately follow up and resolve any issues encountered during the charging process. Mr. Dong and other LanTu owners have received phone calls from LanTu staff to resolve any issues related to charging piles.

This continuous surprise and delight make Mr. Dong feel that LanTu is always focused on car owners. From expressing their needs to the implementation, the efficiency is extremely high, and they can additionally surprise users.

From Mr. Dong’s story, it can be seen that LanTu’s user service goal is not only to meet user needs but also to exceed their expectations.

Car owner Mr. Song: Service Experience Beyond Expectation

To build a high-end brand, product quality is the foundation, and user experience is the real bonus.

Mr. Song, a LanTu car owner, deeply understands this. He used to be a Land Rover Discovery owner and has now sold it, only driving LanTu.

As a Hubei native, Mr. Song has a special affection for Dongfeng Group. He purchased LanTu FREE because he believed in Dongfeng Group’s product quality behind LanTu. Mr. Song said that his friends also drive new energy vehicle produced by new forces in the car manufacturing industry, but as a new brand rising from a traditional car enterprise, he believes LanTu can do better in terms of quality control.

As expected, after delivery, Mr. Song compared his LanTu FREE to those produced by new energy car manufacturers and found LanTu FREE’s quality control better.

Moreover, the LanTu brand’s user experience is even better.

Mr. Song lives in Chibi, Hubei Province, and the closest LanTu service center is hundreds of miles away. Once during maintenance, his car lacked spare parts, and LanTu immediately sent someone from Wuhan, Hubei to deliver the parts to Chibi. This one-on-one exclusive service greatly enhances the user experience of the car owner.The level of customer service provided without considering cost was beyond Mr. Song’s expectation when he communicated with Voyah before purchasing the car. As an experienced driver, Mr. Song had high expectations for after-sales service and did not expect Voyah to exceed them in such a significant manner during the pre-delivery communication with the customers.

Why focus on “user enterprise”?

Ever since its inception, Voyah has relentlessly emphasized on being a user enterprise.

Is the tag “user enterprise” really that important?

Observing the interaction between Voyah’s owners and the brand, along with the expansion of sales, we can see that Voyah strongly emphasizes on user experience, with “user enterprise” as the core development logic.

(1) The key to brand and sales cold start.

Until now, Voyah is only 1 year and 3 months old – its brand was established in July 2020.

Although Voyah made some noise as a new brand, its recognition is still relatively low when compared to traditional brands.

At the same time, the automobile market has been fiercely competitive for a long time, and there is no consumer demand that cannot be met by a corresponding product.

For Voyah, the biggest challenge is how to cold start the brand and sales.

As can be seen from the two owners above, the process of building from just a small amount of recognition to establishing trust and finally completing the purchase is not short. If every interaction point with Voyah does not convey the seriousness and responsibility towards the customer, the owners might have already voted with their feet.

The cost of acquiring customers for a new brand is much higher, and this cost is not money, but trust. By using “user enterprise” as the benchmark, Voyah unifies the behavior of employees from top to bottom, turning limited potential users into users at every contact point.

Although the number of users that Voyah can acquire is limited as a newly established brand, these users are all seed users with growth potential, which lays the foundation for Voyah’s brand and sales growth.

(2) New marketing: User is the channel

As of the end of 2020, NIO’s user referral rate exceeded 50%, and their target is 80%. In 2020, Ideal Automobile’s user referral rate was 60%…

The leading new car brands have high referral rates. The logic is on one hand that new brands do not have many or strong channels, and on the other, that consumer decision-making is increasingly influenced by friends rather than advertising and media.

This is the embodiment of the “everyone is a media” effect in the mobile internet era. A new car user’s satisfaction can quickly spread through their social media accounts, such as WeChat Moments, WeChat groups, Weibo, TikTok, etc.And user satisfaction, in addition to feedback from driving, also has a large component from interactions with dealership staff throughout the car ownership lifecycle, including purchasing, driving, charging, and maintenance. Therefore, emphasizing user experience and providing high-quality services for car owners throughout their entire lifecycle can win user satisfaction and not just commendation, but also influence people around the car owner.

As mentioned earlier, after Mr. Song purchased his car, his friends around him also became interested in Voyah, as shown in the image from the Voyah app.

Voyah operates in a user-centered approach, which has received sincere feedback from users. Voyah car owners are very active in the Voyah car owner group and have driven the sales of Voyah’s FREE model. In fact, the most active car owner recommended 26 people to order.

From seed users to the snowball effect, all rely on user reputation under the premise of ensuring user experience.

(3) Product Development Methodology: User Needs-Based

Whether it is car owners or public opinion, no one doubts that Voyah, backed by Dongfeng Group, can produce high-quality cars. However, the question is whether Voyah’s cars are what the public wants.

Voyah’s solution is simple, which is to collect user feedback frequently and co-create with users. “As car life designers, developers, practitioners, and experience providers, we understand that everyone’s suggestions are the direction of our efforts,” said Zhu Yanfeng, Chairman of Dongfeng Motor Group, at the opening of the first Voyah user night.

Defining users as car life designers, developers, practitioners, and experience providers demonstrates Voyah’s strong determination to build products and services around users. Voyah tries to involve car owners in the research and development, testing, production, and service process as much as possible. From discussions with pre-order customers to benchmark tests in Turpan in summer and Yakeshi in winter, to the service experience process at the time of delivery, Voyah listens to the opinions of car owners and makes adjustments and improvements accordingly.

Taking the “Global Testing Companion Event” held by Voyah FREE as an example, more than 2,000 users or potential users participated, collected more than 200 optimization suggestions, and implemented 130 of them. Regarding the suggestions made by users, Voyah has made more than 130 cumulative improvements and optimizations in mass-produced vehicles, covering details, workmanship, car-machine interaction, driving experience, NVH, experience optimization, intelligent driving, and other aspects.

In addition, as mentioned earlier, the benefits of buying a car from Voyah that bring surprises to users continuously is sparked by the collision of sparks between Voyah and users in the co-creation process. For example, Mr. Dong suggested to Voyah that the scope of free charging service should be expanded from Voyah’s self-built stations to third-party stations. After this suggestion was adopted, it also received the approval of users.

Finally, according to the needs of car owners, Voyah has improved its free charging service. Currently, Voyah car owners can enjoy 800 kWh of free charging every month and can charge for free at five third-party charging stations, including State Grid, Southern Power Grid, TELD, Star Charge, and Quick Charge.

Voyah extracts user needs from high-frequency interactions, improves and upgrades products, and is closer to the development concept of Internet products. It is also the coping strategy for the traditional automobile industry to integrate and innovate with the Internet industry.

The “User Enterprise” tag behind it is a product methodology, and not recognizing this methodology is unsustainable. In the long run, automobile companies will inevitably face cross-border integration competition, especially from Internet giants. Only by learning these advantages of enterprises can automobile companies not fall behind.

From these perspectives, we can also understand the urgency of Voyah to create a “User Enterprise”. With this as the theme, Voyah can not only give full play to the advantages of a traditional car enterprise but also avoid sticking to the old ways. This is the key to the success of Voyah’s new brand journey.

In the case of China’s saturated automobile market, a new high-end brand cannot be established by traditional methods. Voyah positioning itself as a user enterprise, co-creating with users, and providing high-quality services to users is the simplest and most effective method, and it is also inevitable.

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.