How to improve your user operation system? Here are 4 ways

We can think of the user operation system as a big tree with spreading branches and leaves. Each part of the system provides the necessary "photosynthesis", that is, the input of nutrients, to maintain the normal life operation of the tree.

When we start operating a product, we need to develop some user operation rules documents in advance. It is a complete process system, including all documented operating rules for organizational operations, corresponding organizations set up to achieve goals, and external interfaces related to them. Input is refined through a process with corresponding rules and becomes the output of the organization's existence, ensuring the continuation and development of the organization and making work more organized.

1. Establishment of User Information System

The user information here is a broad concept. Starting from the marketing launch, the user's source, user purpose, user basic information (age, gender, region, etc.) and user consumption information, etc., all need to be classified and organized.

The source of users can not only show whether your activities and delivery channels have achieved the expected results, but also for users coming through this channel, you can clearly know what type of activities this user likes, or which keywords he is interested in, thereby forming conversions .

Take fresh food e-commerce as an example: "Buy 10 apples for 10 yuan". This kind of special promotion advertisement attracts users. In subsequent activities, we can push special promotion information to this type of users in a targeted manner. It can be in the form of SMS, or through EDM or in-site push based on user information.

Nowadays, advertising service providers can also conduct targeted delivery based on user cookies, find users who have previously clicked on special promotion ads, and then launch a new round of special promotion ads. In this way, for advertising, the second data is based on the user data of the first successful purchase, and the conversion rate will be higher than that of the whole network.

In addition, we can further incentivize users to make repeat purchases based on their source. If users register and make purchases because they click on special promotion ads, we can regularly send cash coupons, discount coupons and other coupons to their accounts to encourage them to buy again.

Similarly, based on weather changes, user gender and age, and online search habits, we can push sunscreen ads to female users aged 15-40 (of course other ages are also needed, but this age group is a loyal Internet user) in areas with strong ultraviolet rays; we can push ads for mutton slices and hot pot foods to users in winter, and ads for beverages and fruits in summer.

All of these are statistically classified based on users’ daily consumption habits. We can classify and organize them according to our existing users and then carry out corresponding operations. We can also use the data resources of third-party service providers to carry out labeling of users across the entire network.

We can even push corresponding ads according to the user's geographic location information and time nodes. For example, at 11:00 a.m., we can push ads and discount information of restaurants near the user; at 3-4 p.m., we can push ads of nearby businesses such as afternoon tea and drinks.

If you make good use of the user's basic information, the repurchase ability of your existing users can be greatly improved, the conversion cost can be reduced, and the word-of-mouth communication effect among users can be improved. User basic information is an endless treasure mine. With the iteration of Internet technology, we can gradually dig out the iceberg of user information.

2. Establishment of User Level System

Regardless of whether your Internet platform is monetized through content or products, users are the foundation. Giving users different rights and services can make them more loyal to your products.

Just like bank credit cards, ordinary cards and platinum cards not only have very different loan amounts, but also different user services. Platinum cards can provide one-on-one service from professional customer service and send you a cake on your birthday. Ordinary card users do not have these benefits, so they will try their best to meet the standards for upgrading to platinum cards, such as: repayment credit, bank deposits, etc.

The establishment of user levels is a response to people's competitive psychology, or a demand for users to obtain higher-level services. To put it more precisely, it is about increasing the level of user recognition of your product. If a low-level user recognizes your product, he will try his best to complete the requirements for upgrading his level.

To establish a user level system, you first need to formulate the rights and interests that users of different levels can obtain based on the product. Just like in a game , high-level players will have certain advantages over low-level players in terms of attack power, defense, health, etc.

Once users discover this difference in advantage, they will try their best to complete the tasks or thresholds you assign and improve their levels. Then, user operations personnel can formulate different upgrade strategies, activities, etc. according to different levels of users to make users active.

At this time, the operator must be very clear in his mind what you want to gain through users of different levels? Is it to bring more profits? Or can it help you manage? Or provide content?

We can look at forums or BBS to see a more complete user rating system. Some forums ban newly registered users for 24 hours. After 24 hours, users can comment on posts posted by others, but cannot post topics themselves. After a certain number of comments are made, they can upgrade to posting.

However, some strict forums will restrict your topics from having pictures, or even the number of posts per day. There are various constraints brought by levels. Only when you reach a certain level can you speak freely.

From this series of restrictions on levels, we can see the operator's purpose. A 24-hour ban will be imposed after registration to prevent users from maliciously flooding the platform with spam, posting advertisements, and other users who cannot provide high-quality content for the platform. After the 24-hour ban is lifted, operators require users to only comment and avoid posts with advertising themes.

No matter what kind of product it is, operators must combine their own products and goals when formulating a user level system and build a complete level system that can make your user operations more effective. Otherwise, it will become useless.

3. Establishment of User Incentive System

Why should we establish a user incentive system?

I think this question is not difficult to answer. As a user operation staff, you certainly don’t want to see your users only complete one consumption, or publish content once. We attract a new user to complete the first transaction or content production at a high cost, and we must want this user to continue to contribute to us. Every time the user contributes, your new customer cost will be lower.

Your incentives must make users want to contribute or pay, so you must develop your incentive system based on the essence of user needs.

1. User positioning

There are two most common types of company incentives we see in the workplace. One is the incentive for sales, that is, bonuses. For every sale, there will be a corresponding commission ratio. This is the simplest incentive. Now many companies have made sales commissions into a complex and complete system.

Divide the bonus commission into several stages. For example, the commission ratios for a single sales of 10,000 yuan and 100,000 yuan are different. There will be additional commissions for monthly, quarterly or annual sales of 100,000 yuan, 1 million yuan or 10 million yuan. In this way, sales staff will always be affected by the commission ratio and will constantly improve their performance in order to get more bonuses.

Another incentive measure often used by human resources is recruitment referral rewards. Recruiting suitable personnel has always been a big problem for companies. Even if HR has three heads and six arms, it is difficult to recruit personnel who meet the functional requirements of each position.

Because the most important bottleneck is that HR does not have a complete grasp of the work content and professional knowledge of other departments. If an HR can understand development, draw prototypes, do operations, sell products, do design, and do accounting, then please introduce this person to me.

HR can avoid this bottleneck through a simple incentive and simplify things. By introducing employees from different departments, technology can introduce technical personnel, and operations can introduce operations personnel. People in the same department will best understand the capabilities required for the position. All HR needs to do is to understand what the interviewee needs to know.

The common point level rewards we see are just the tip of the iceberg. For different products, not every incentive method is the same. We need to solve the differences in user needs from the user's perspective based on the product positioning and business. The real user incentive method may not be the same in the implementation of the same plan, but there are still certain ideas on how to solve the problem of user incentives.

Before doing user positioning, we must be clear about what our purpose is in positioning users?

The purpose is to motivate users and prevent other users’ negative actions from bringing devastating disasters to the product.

For example, the game product Honor of Kings not only encourages paying users to continue paying, but also designs different charging categories.

For example: skins, first-charge unique hero rewards, props, etc., and guiding non-consuming players to become paying users as soon as possible, allowing non-spending users to become paying users, and grasping the user's vanity and sense of superiority. In order to have better-looking skin than others, to be different from other user heroes, and to achieve good results in the game, the King of Glory team can be said to have taken user incentives to the extreme.

User positioning is actually to create a user dimension portrait for product user classification. For our own products, we need to know what kind of users can correctly push the products forward, what position they play in the products, and what kind of value they can bring to the products. Once we have clearly defined the different user positioning, we can get to the point more accurately when building a user incentive system.

2. What kind of users can be motivated

After completing user positioning, start from the product and think carefully about the core value of the product's business model . Analyze which actions users take that can provide value to the product. Do these users need to be incentivized? Which users' actions are harmful to the product? These users need to be punished or optimized.

Therefore, the incentive system cannot simply reward users, but also impose corresponding punishments on users who bring negative impacts to the product.

For example, Toutiao ’s practice of clearly distinguishing between rewards and punishments is that it will periodically publicize Toutiao accounts suspected of plagiarizing content, and the punishment will be either a ban or a closure of the account. In addition, Toutiao accounts with high originality will be pushed to a large number of users, and each time the reading volume reaches a certain level, they can receive a reward of a corresponding amount.

Doing this is actually encouraging everyone to continue to create original works, while avoiding the impact of plagiarism on original creators. We must all remember the incidents involving many singers and musicians and Baidu and some music product platforms regarding pirated audio and video products. Pirated and plagiarized content is, to a large extent, a psychological blow to the original creator.

On the other hand, as a recognition for the original creator, if the original content is of high quality, Toutiao will display it to many online users, which will increase the number of readings, which means that the original creator can get a certain degree of cash reward.

3. How to motivate users to benefit the product

Common incentives include user behavior constraints, levels, points, material rewards, or cash rewards. When it comes to our own products, we need to think about human nature. Which does the user value more, vanity or profit? Which one do users prefer in terms of constraints and levels of speech?

Here I have to mention human nature and what aspects of it we can exploit: lust, greed, laziness, vanity, arrogance, snooping, etc. Corresponding to different human characteristics, we can formulate different user incentive plans.

This third aspect is a very important step in implementation. Only when we fully understand the relationship between products and users can we accurately formulate an incentive system. Whether users need spiritual satisfaction, material satisfaction, or dependence on products, we can create a very perfect user incentive system.

The establishment of a user incentive system cannot be done by an operations department alone. It requires not only product work, but also cooperation from all operations departments. For every link of the entire product, including positioning, planning, execution, data collection, optimization, and improvement, after building a user incentive system, we can form a closed loop of this system and continuously optimize and improve it.

The incentive system can be infiltrated from the moment the user registers. For food delivery software, newly registered users can enjoy free delivery for their first order, and can receive cash coupons of random prices for each subsequent transaction. This way, users will know that they will get a discount every time they place an order. Although the amount is random, users do not care about the amount, but care about the surprise of getting a different price discount each time.

Tmall sends out discount coupons from time to time, driving users crazy again and again. In fact, the most direct way of motivation is financial stimulation, which is also a way of motivation used by such products.

But for the incentive system, this approach needs to be comprehensive. If you are doing a discount event, you must calculate the price well. For example, your platform products are priced at 39 yuan, 49 yuan and 59 yuan to participate in the event. Then the method I suggest is to use the strategy of discounting a certain amount when the purchase reaches 199 yuan, 299 yuan or 399 yuan, so that you can always sell one more product.

For UGC platform products, the user incentive system is to encourage them to provide high-quality content and to provide incentives for interaction among users.

There are three types of users of this type of product:

• The first type of users are writers who like to express their opinions. They like to express their views or some practical information on their professional fields or some real events .
• The second type of users are media, who need to establish their exposure and authority through various channels;
• The third type is enterprises and founders, who need a platform to introduce and promote their products.

However, at present, driven by interests, a fourth type of people has emerged, that is, users who make money directly by relying on this platform. Some UGC platforms have already provided immediate monetization rewards to content providers, and users can earn money directly through the content they publish.

After the opening of the Toutiao account, you can only publish one article a day during the novice period. After reaching a certain index, you will pass the novice period, release the permissions, and the interaction with fans can also increase the index.

After the novice period, if a user publishes a piece of content that reaches a certain specified number of readings, he or she can also receive a reward of the corresponding amount. In this way, Toutiao not only enriches the content of its platform, but also enables good interaction between users. Users can also obtain certain benefits through the platform.

User incentives are a way to operate conventional circles of users. When Didi Taxi was first launched, in order to retain drivers and passengers, it offered high reward incentives in both directions.

We can look back at that passionate period. At the beginning of Didi 's story, employees relied on finding taxi drivers one by one to explain how to install and use the software. At that time, as a startup company, this should be the most effective way to integrate seed users . I have also mentioned Xiaomi's operating method after going online, looking for experiencers in various forum communities, and registering hundreds of accounts to post and flood the forum with messages.

While Didi is gathering some seed users like drivers, it is also working hard on the passenger side. They focus on the concept of private cars and use subsidies to attract users. On the driver side, not only can drivers receive a certain amount of subsidies for each order, but there is also a task mode, where they will receive additional rewards of different amounts for completing 5 or 10 orders. This can prevent drivers from jumping orders, because the benefits of jumping orders may not be as much as the rewards.

On the user side, users can collect coupons shared by others after taking a ride and use them as coupons for their own taxi rides. In addition, Didi will hold free-of-charge events from time to time. In this way, through certain user incentives, drivers and users will start to use it habitually and develop a habit.

Although the promotion is not as strong as before and the fare is even higher than that of ordinary taxis, users still choose to use this software. Therefore, the establishment of an incentive system is an indispensable method for user operation. Different incentive policies for different products can maintain user stickiness while achieving explosive growth in users.

4. Establishment of User Question System

User questions can be user suggestions for products, complaints, or obtained through data analysis of user habits. On the one hand, the question system is established to better iterate one's own products, and users are the best product managers . On the other hand, for transaction-based platform products, they can be collected and organized as Q&A scripts, and customer service staff can understand each user's previous records to determine the user's attributes (does he complain frequently? What is his personality like? Is he a difficult user?).

A friend of mine had a personal experience. Once, after purchasing a product on a large e-commerce platform, he found that the price was not the lowest. So, this friend contacted customer service, and after a while, the customer service not only agreed to return the goods, but also gave a gift.

Most people may not care about this kind of problem. Since the merchant has made a promise, if it fails to fulfill it, it should be punished accordingly. My friend's action is to fight for his own rights. At the same time, when customer service staff receive complaints or questions from such users in the future, they will speed up the process and give them greater weight.

If everyone is like this user, it will actually complement the merchant's service system, improve the merchant's service system, and perfect the service part of user operations.

When establishing a user question system, you need to pay attention to: what type of product you have. Based on the product direction, we need to circle the questions that our users may ask, the ways to ask questions, and the channels to provide feedback to users. It is also necessary to clarify the departmental process allocation after collecting user issues, how to solve the problems, the processing progress, the priority (urgent but not important, important but not urgent, urgent and important), etc.

For example: a user complains about a problem with a product function. The customer service staff classifies the problem into product or operation (depending on the company structure) through the background or established process system. After the product or operation receives the bug, they solve the problem through the problem handling process of each department and provide feedback to the user through operation rewards or customer service care.

Users will appreciate the efficiency (professionalism) of this platform and the importance it places on users. Users will share their experiences with their family, friends or colleagues over chat and conversation.

A small action, without paying a high cost, can not only solve the product problem, but also increase user loyalty and word-of-mouth reputation. Why not do this kind of user operation?

We can think of the user operation system as a big tree with spreading branches and leaves. Each part provides the necessary "photosynthesis" for the tree, that is, the input of nutrients, to maintain the normal life operation of the tree.

Author: It is Xiaolong, not Xiaolong, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Everyone is a Product Manager