Tencent's operational path over the years

I would like to share with you four short stories about Operation Goose, which are also my experience in the operation work. I would like to share the paths that Operation Goose has taken during the operation process and what detours can be avoided by everyone.

1. User Operation -Story of External Team

The first story I want to share is about my interactions with the external team of QQ Show when I was an operator of QQ Show. This external team is equivalent to a collection of QQ Show fans, or a team of high-quality fans. The external team is composed of users who are particularly fond of the QQ Show product. These people are not only fans, but also undertake tasks such as product promotion, content construction, and product experience .

Regarding external teams, we first need to recruit them , then divide the work among the recruits, and then manage their work. If you do well, you will receive material or spiritual rewards; if you do not do well, there will also be some symbolic punishments. With reasonable division of labor management and a clear reward and punishment mechanism, the team can form a positive cooperative atmosphere and achieve task goals according to our needs.

QQ Show external team recruitment channels

At that time, the main channel for recruitment was the forum , where fans would discuss the product, provide feedback and put forward their ideas. In the forum you will see that some fans are particularly enthusiastic about giving feedback on products. We immediately regard this group of fans as core users or core fans, and give them priority when recruiting external teams .

At the same time, Tencent’s customer service phone number is also a good channel for communicating with users . Although most customer service calls are complaints, we occasionally receive some suggestions. Those who prefer to provide feedback through customer service calls will also be invited to become members.

QQ Show is a product that relies on the social tool QQ, and the relationship between people is very close. Internal referrals become a very important source for later external team recruitment. Members of external teams can recommend their partners to join the team.

Whether it is a forum, a customer service phone number, or an internal referral, the recruitment ideas behind it have not changed much. The recruitment idea behind the forum is to use the product discussion area where users discuss products or provide feedback on products . In the past, products had their own private forums, but now product discussion areas have become Weibo, Baidu Tieba , or interest groups on QQ, etc. The recruitment idea behind the customer service phone is to use channels to contact users . At this stage, these contact channels have become Weibo and WeChat public accounts . Or some products are social media themselves, such as Zhihu, Momo, etc. These channels can connect with users very well. The recruitment idea behind internal referrals is social communication . As long as there is social communication between users, no matter what product they rely on, the internal referral recruitment channel will always be there.

Every product will have its own fans, and fan opinions are very important when optimizing the product. Every operations colleague should master the external team and external users while mastering the product. Communicating with these users can greatly facilitate operations work and expand work ideas.

External division of labor of QQ Show

The QQ Show external team mainly does three parts of work.

The first part is propaganda. We will invite students from external teams to write some user experiences and distribute them on Tieba , forums, etc. There are also some other media outlets that help us publish articles, so that more people can know about QQ Show.

The second part is content matching. QQ Show is a virtual character composed of many components, including facial features, clothes, background accessories, etc. It is far from enough to simply rely on the official to output these well-matched contents. Fortunately, there are those who like to play QQ Show and provide a lot of QQ Show content they have set up. On the one hand, it makes it easier for users who are not very good at dressing to use the QQ Show product; on the other hand, the works submitted by external teams are displayed on the official website, allowing them to fully express their preferences, which is a very honorable and happy thing for the team members.

The third part is to support our work, mainly user research . Internet products are constantly iterating, so how can we receive more opinions? External teams are a very good feedback channel. They will experience the product very seriously and truly look at the product from the user's perspective, or even the fan's perspective. With a critical eye, we can help you find problems and potential bugs in your product.

One of the main purposes of the division of labor among external group members is to make the best use of their talents . Let every person with expertise find his own suitable position, do the job that suits him best, and maximize his vitality. At the same time, fans' occasional love and feedback for the product have become rhythmic behaviors with work and tasks, turning inefficient talk into efficient output.

QQ Show Outbound Group Reward Pyramid

QQ Show’s rewards for external teams have been changing. In the early days, there were material rewards, such as Q coins and monthly service packages, but these rewards were not particularly effective in motivating fans, because many fans were not reluctant to spend money on products. Later we strengthened the display of fans’ identities . For example, if a QQ show was created by a fan, we would display the fan’s name to indicate that it was his work. Behind this is our thinking and satisfaction of human needs.

Maslow's need theory divides human needs into five categories like a ladder, namely physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs . When fans use the QQ Show product, the Q coins we give them are actually just to meet their most basic needs. But for fans, they have already gone beyond the primary needs stage and need more advanced needs - respect needs and even self-actualization needs. Just like we display the author's name in the product, it satisfies the user's need for self-realization. If the product can give fans corresponding satisfaction, they will be more dependent on your product. The stronger the fans' attachment to your product, the more willing they are to stay with it.

2. User Operation-The Story of Level System and User Retention

The Red Diamond business is a monthly subscription service based on QQ Show. The earliest core privilege of QQ Red Diamond was discounts on single items, which was later transformed into free wearing of all items. After users activate the Red Diamond service, they can wear any clothes on the QQ Show website.

After the monthly subscription service was launched, the user base grew rapidly, but soon reached a user growth bottleneck. There are many new users joining every day, but also many leaving. How can we keep users?

We conducted some in-depth data analysis and found that if users can renew their service for one month after it expires, their subsequent retention will be much better. So the idea to solve the bottleneck of user growth is how to get users to renew and retain them? What we want to do is to give retained users more benefits. Therefore, we made a lot of changes in the privilege operation. First, we created a level system. When you first activate the red diamond, you are at level one. If you pay for only one month, you can only upgrade to level one. If you buy another month, you can quickly reach level two, creating differences in level and identity. Secondly, LV2 users can enjoy many new privileges. Not only can you wear it for free, but you can also give QQ Show to your friends so that your friends can also wear QQ Show for free. Since QQ Show was very popular as a virtual gift at the time, it greatly enhanced the status of Red Diamond LV2 users in the social scene and improved user satisfaction and loyalty.

In addition to the rating system, there are many things that can be done to retain users. For those who have used Tencent's monthly subscription service, QQ will constantly remind you that your membership or red diamond will expire soon and you should pay quickly. You will see that even after it expires, it will continue to remind you. Why are there so many prompts? In fact, the reason why many users do not renew their subscriptions is that they forget. While enjoying the service, users have become aware of the uniqueness of their identity and acknowledged the premium experience that the monthly service brings them. Reminders can prevent users from losing the service due to forgetfulness, which is also a kind of service .

3. Data Operation - User Churn Analysis Story

Tencent most commonly measures users on a monthly basis. The user pool is roughly divided into several parts: new users, retained users, and lost users each month.

There is a division of labor within the operations team. If someone is good at marketing , let him do new operations. The KPI assessment indicator is to attract as many new users as possible , which can be achieved through methods such as giving gifts, discounts, or cooperating with other businesses.

Some people are good at creating features, privileges, and studying user experience , so they should work on user retention. Find ways to increase user activity, update QQ Show content, or create more new privileges that users like. In addition, we will also conduct some user outreach to inform users of new products and new privileges.

Someone is responsible for new customers, someone is responsible for retention, and someone must be responsible for attrition. For this group of users, the focus is on reaching and retaining them. For example, if a user churns, a message will be sent to him to remind him to pay. In addition, we will conduct user research and user analysis to see the reasons for user churn. Is it because of the gradual decrease in the frequency of replacement that caused the loss, or is it because of dissatisfaction with the functions of our products that caused the loss? By analyzing what kind of users are prone to churn, we can make targeted improvements to improve user satisfaction and minimize the churn of these users.

Through reasonable division of labor and refined marketing to the target groups , the team's operational efficiency and effectiveness can be greatly improved.

4. Data Operations-The Story of Income Fluctuation Analysis

This story comes from the QQ mobile game . As an operator of a revenue product, monitoring revenue is one of the most routine tasks. Any large fluctuations in income require finding the reasons, looking at a lot of data, and consulting many reports for analysis.

It takes about an hour to analyze these data each time. Although the analysis ideas are fixed, analyzing data in different reports is very time-consuming . Therefore, we built an automated monitoring system to compare data between commonly used reports and analyze fluctuations in game revenue and the game's new user retention. After the data is monitored, a corresponding alarm mechanism is also set up. If the data exceeds the normal fluctuation range, the system will automatically send an email to notify the abnormal data fluctuation. In this way, daily income fluctuations can be flexibly controlled and the efficiency of data analysis is greatly improved. The saved time can be used to do many meaningful things, such as talking more with the cooperation team and how to support them with data. Or do some more in-depth data analysis, optimize products, and strive to promote greater revenue growth.

As an operator or one who is more data-analytical, you will often receive temporary analysis requests and need to design some analysis plans individually . After doing it once, twice, and three times, you will find that some requirements are more common. At this time, you can organize the core methods and ideas for analyzing similar requirements, and use some electronic methods to let the development team help you with automated analysis, monitoring, or alerting.

This will allow you to complete your analysis work more quickly and improve your work efficiency. The core idea is automation . Reduce the time we waste on repetitive work and do more creative work. As an operator, the gradual improvement in efficiency will leave you with valuable time and energy, allowing you to do more operational activities or thinking, or interact with users.

To sum up, I hope everyone can realize four points in operations.

• The first is Maslow's needs analysis . During the operation process, it is not only necessary to meet people's most basic needs, but it would be better to meet higher-level needs.
• The second story is about how data analysis can help us discover and solve problems.
• The third story is about the sophisticated thinking of the crowd .
• The fourth type of thinking is automated thinking . We should avoid repeating inefficient tasks and try to automate and mechanize them to do more meaningful and creative work. This will further improve work efficiency and make operations better.

1. How to effectively avoid user churn?

Let’s transform this question into how to keep users. First of all, why do users use your product? Everyone should understand the biggest advantage of their product and continue to magnify this advantage to increase product stickiness.

In Maslow's needs model, it is indeed easy to lose customers if only low-level needs are met. It would be better if high-level needs are met. Secondly, we need to do a good job of user analysis, understand why users churn, and make targeted and strategic improvements based on these reasons. The third is that the loss of many users may be unintentional because users are faced with many temptations every day. In addition to making our own products and providing a better user experience, we also need to reach out to users. When users are about to leave or haven't come for a long time, we need to find ways to make them remember you and experience your product again. If you can carry out refined operations and know what he liked most in the past, the efficiency of impressing him and recalling him will be very high.

2. What should operations do if there is no immediate technical support for issues raised by core users?

Does your team have to satisfy the bugs raised by core users? This is not certain. First of all, we need to analyze that core users are often heavy users, and the needs of heavy users may be niche, and niche needs can be delayed. If it is a popular demand, you must argue with the technical team and get it solved. If niche demands are raised by a user group with word-of-mouth influence, it is also worth addressing. If you improve the satisfaction of these opinion leaders, they will spontaneously spread the word and bring in new users, and your investment in this area will be very worthwhile. If some functions cannot be completed in a short period of time, you can communicate the reasons with core users honestly, or send them small gifts to thank them.

3. How can paid products continuously stimulate users to pay?

The first thing is to be prepared to collect payments. The reason why many products lose users is not because users are unwilling to use the products, but because they forget to use them. In the process of collecting payment, we should pay attention to personalization and not use the same collection logic for all users. What is more important is to remind them of the things they care about. The second is to focus on your product advantages and continuously strengthen them. When product advantages continue to strengthen, it is actually retaining users. Third, continuously expand services based on seed users . Finally, it is important to provide more services to users who have paid for a long time. When a user gets a better experience after paying for a long time, he will be more willing to switch to long-term payment.

There are two points to note here: First, it is more important to urge payment invisibly, so that users can strengthen the relationship between using functions and paying during the process of using the product, and make them realize that enjoying privileges is related to their payment. Another point is to pay attention to the rhythm when collecting payments and not to do it too frequently.