Your product will not die in "strategy and pattern", but in "the last meter"

As we all know, people are always keen to pay attention to and discuss some advanced topics, such as strategy and structure, especially entrepreneurs and managers of large companies.

There is nothing wrong with this. Strategic thinking and thinking pattern are indeed very important. However, success cannot be achieved by just relying on these fancy things.

We have seen that many managers are divorced from business realities, attending parties and giving speeches everywhere all day long, and always talking about "reverse pressure, empowerment, blessing, all-in, layout, entry, big data , cloud computing, and artificial intelligence ." Their products are all claimed to be "intelligent, considerate, one-stop, all-round, industry-leading, and world-class."

But when you actually use their business once, you will be extremely shocked and angry at the poor experience.

Of course, there are also many low-key and pragmatic companies in the world. They are not good at "bragging and making big promises" and only use good products and services to gain recognition and respect.

The strategies and patterns are similar, but why is there such a huge difference?

This involves the question of whether the experience and service of the "last mile" of the product are good .

The so-called "last meter" is similar to the "last mile" often mentioned in logistics distribution. It refers to all the last key links that are in close contact with users, including products, experience, packaging, stores, customer service, etc.

In comparison, those high-sounding topics such as "strategy, pattern, direction" are often "10,000 kilometers" away from users. While the bosses are talking about concepts and giving remote commands “10,000 kilometers” away, they have no idea that their own great and glorious strategies have been seriously distorted or even failed in the “last meter”.

Next, I will use my own personal experience in the past year and the cases of several well-known " used car trading websites, co-working brands, and online English education platforms" to let everyone feel how bad the "last 1 meter" of these well-known brands is. Finally, we will give several coping strategies to help companies grasp the "last meter" while negotiating strategies.

The terrible "last meter" of famous brands

The “last 1 meter” of used car websites

In the past two years, entrepreneurship in the used car field has been in full swing. Several well-known brands have spared no expense and made a big splash, some using celebrities as their spokespeople, others sponsoring shows, and making a big deal about it.

These brands all claim to be "the largest in the country, leading the industry, high-quality and reliable, car owners get more money and buyers spend less", but when you actually experience their products and get to know the "last meter", you find that this is not the case.

I recently wanted to sell an old car, and after hearing that the "offline used car market is too complicated", I decided to try the well-known used car platform A.

I didn't expect that in less than a month from the beginning to now, I would experience the terrible "last 1 meter" of the entire chain of Platform A - from on-site vehicle inspection to agency selling of the car, it was all like this.

Now, let’s talk about it slowly.

On-site vehicle inspection and taking people on private work in violation of regulations. One day, at the agreed time, a vehicle inspector from platform A, wearing work clothes and a work badge, came to inspect the vehicle. As soon as he got to the car, he made a phone call, originally to notify another person to come over.

After a while, a car drove up and a man in plain clothes got out of the car. During the twenty to thirty minutes that the inspector was inspecting the car, the man was watching from the sidelines.

It was obvious that the inspector was helping his accomplice to take on private work. If he comes across a good vehicle, he will bypass the platform and let his accomplices collect the vehicle first.

Try your best to deceive people and lower the price. After taking photos and inspecting the car, the inspector asked me to set a price. I gave a reasonable price that was given after multiple inquiries and evaluations. This price was also the evaluation price given by their platform, but the inspector immediately said "the price is too high" after hearing it.

He said that the appraisal prices on the platform are "inaccurate" and only the prices in their backend are accurate. So he showed me the backend interface for a moment, and I saw that the price was indeed 20,000 or 30,000 lower. But I noticed that the price he showed me was the price for "urgent sale within 3 days", and he deliberately covered up the transaction prices of those that were not in a hurry to sell (for example, selling in one or two weeks or even a month). I wasn't going to sell the car until a month later, so I asked him to look at a few other prices, but he was evasive and refused to show me.

Leaking customer information will lead to harassing phone calls. A few days later, I really received a call from another place about buying a car. From the accent, it was not the stranger who appeared during the car inspection. I said that I only entrust the platform to sell, and do not directly connect with individual buyers. Then I asked him how he got my information, and he said calmly, "Don't worry about that."

Of course, I rejected his intention to buy the car. Later, I called the platform’s customer service to inquire about this matter, and the customer service staff said very confidently that "they will not leak the car owner’s information because they cannot see the mobile phone number in the background."

The detail experience is insufficient and warm reminders are missing. When the inspector came up to inspect the car, I realized that the car had not been washed for many days and the appearance was very dirty. Moreover, the debris inside the car and the trunk was not cleaned up. In this way, the photos taken will inevitably be poor, which may affect sales. However, the platform did not send any text messages or give any reminders in advance. Of course, it now seems that this requirement is a luxury for their platform.

You see, I didn’t expect that such a big brand with such a glamorous appearance would have such a bad “last meter”.

Let me ask you, do managers know that the front line is so chaotic? Can such a company still succeed?

The “last meter” of co-working space

Along with the surging entrepreneurial wave, many companies such as "co-working spaces and incubators" have emerged to serve entrepreneurs.

Some of the big brands claim that they "make entrepreneurship worry-free, grow with you, are world-class, and provide services for the entire industry chain", etc., but their "last meter" makes entrepreneurs feel extremely disappointed.

At the beginning of the year, I rented an independent office area of ​​dozens of square meters through a well-known co-working brand B. Unexpectedly, all the terrible "last meter" began from here.

The property management is chaotic, the environment is poor and the service is poor. The office is located in a well-known office building in the core area of ​​Beijing's Internet entrepreneurship , but the poor environment and service surprised me.

At first I planned to rent an underground parking space, so the property staff took me to the parking lot to have a look. When I reached the second underground floor, as soon as I got out of the elevator, a pungent smell of urine hit my nose. It is unbelievable that people were allowed to urinate and defecate in broad daylight.

During this period, the property staff suggested that they could rent a parking space from him without signing a contract, which would be cheaper. I did not condone such despicable behavior of abusing power for personal gain and rejected him directly.

In addition, due to the large number of people, unreasonable elevator settings (no linkage), strange elevator behavior (sometimes stopping and sometimes not stopping), etc., every time I take the elevator, it is a frustrating experience. This problem has been around for a long time and no one cares when I call the property management.

All of the above situations show how low the level of property management is.

Problems with basic office equipment frequently occurred and repeated attempts at communication were unsuccessful. The independent offices of the co-working brand B focus on “saving worry and effort, ready to move in”, which means that all office furniture and appliances are available. But when I moved in, I found various problems, such as the internet was not working and the sockets had no electricity. The technicians who came to repair the network at that time exclaimed, "How can we access the Internet if the network cables are connected incorrectly?" Regarding the issue of no electricity in the wall socket, I communicated with them many times and found them unreliable, so I bought a few power strips and drew electricity from the sockets nearby. What is puzzling is that three or four months have passed and the small problem of the socket having no electricity has not been solved.

To make matters even more unfortunate, my office was soon flooded due to an accidental burst water pipe and was unusable.

Because there was too much water leakage and the soaking time was too long, and the floor was a wooden floor with carpet glued on, it was impossible to dry naturally. However, a week after the incident, their staff claimed that the problem had been resolved and attempted to force us to move in, completely disregarding the health of our customers. But when I lifted the carpet, I found that there were still water stains on the floor inside, and they gave up after seeing that.

Later, they claimed that they had been actively coordinating with the property and the owner to replace the floor. Two months have passed and it has not been resolved.

They only collect rent and don’t care about “incubation and support”. Many “incubators and co-working spaces” say they “provide entrepreneurs with a full range of entrepreneurial services”, but the one I chose did not reflect that at all. For example, even the installation and debugging of the all-in-one printer and copier that was equipped at the time was unattended, so we had to rely on ourselves to solve it.

All in all, my feeling is that this is no different than "renting a house" directly from the owner. In this way, customers paid higher rents but did not get more considerate services.

The “last 1 meter” of online English education

Online education startups have also been very popular in recent years.

Last year, I occasionally saw an advertisement for a well-known online English education institution C, which said "gathering senior experts from around the world, allowing you to learn English easily and comfortably from real foreign teachers anytime and anywhere, and experience the best online education services" and so on.

I felt that this was more convenient than offline training courses like EF and Wall Street English, so I paid more than 20,000 yuan to sign up on impulse.

Unexpectedly, this "last meter" that cost a lot of money was not satisfactory.

The quality of teachers varies greatly. Although the teachers on this platform are genuine foreigners, they often come from some remote small countries rather than mainstream areas of Britain and the United States, let alone "global senior experts." Some teachers have very strange spoken pronunciations. There were a few times when I even encountered teachers mispronouncing words. I had no choice but to post screenshots of the word's phonetic symbols, and they then realized it.

Network problems occur frequently, seriously affecting the experience. Although online learning is convenient, network problems often occur. Freezing and disconnection are not uncommon. Sometimes, even though the system is functioning normally, the page will force you to "exit and re-enter" before you can continue. After a class like this, you find that you can hardly say a few words and the effect of your practice is very poor.

Later, due to my busy work, I didn’t make any appointments for a long time. Their customer service staff are very conscientious and responsible. They keep calling and persuading us to continue making appointments.

If students are unwilling to continue attending classes, in addition to subjective reasons such as "not persisting enough", the platform should look for the reasons within itself and effectively improve the experience of the "last 1 meter".

I joked with my friends that instead of spending 20,000 yuan on classes like this, it would be better to use the money to go to Wudaokou, the center of the universe, to meet some foreign friends and treat them to coffee and meals every time. In this way, if we have in-depth communication for two hours each time, after one or two hundred times, the effect should not be too bad.

In addition, I have encountered many terrible "last meter" this year. For example, a company that helped me with "registration and accounting" "accidentally" leaked my personal information to the Internet, and the test results of two models of a well-known PM2.5 detector brand differed by several times. After calling the other party, their service attitude is unacceptable.

I will not elaborate on these things. As I mentioned in my old article "Given the poor experience of most products, it's not about talent at all", bad products and services are everywhere, and "the product is basically usable" is actually a high requirement.

Of course, in this vast world, there are some products that do a great job in the “last meter” and are worthy of praise and learning. Here are a few examples.

Those elegant "last 1 meter"

Intimate door-to-door car maintenance service

Before, I saw several people posting on WeChat Moments , saying that the service of a certain door-to-door car maintenance brand D was good, and attached on-site photos of their own car maintenance.

So I tried it once and found that the experience of “the last meter” was really good. Below, some specific details are given.

When the uniformed staff arrives, they first set up a camera next to the vehicle, giving you the feeling of a Hollywood set. It turns out that this is to record the entire maintenance process to ensure the quality of service. Moreover, when unpacking new engine oil and checking tires, etc., the staff must face the camera and speak while ensuring that the recording is clear.

To ensure cleanliness, the staff will put a seat cover on the driver's seat. Every time before getting in the car, he would take off the gloves he used to change the oil and check the engine, and put on a pair of clean white gloves he took out of his pocket.

After changing the engine oil, the staff took out two small bottles and poured the remaining oil in the barrel into each of them. Then they put a barcode on the bottle and gave this precious sample, which was similar to oral liquid, to me for sealing.

During this time, I chatted with the staff and asked them how their business was developing. He said it was pretty good, and more than 60% of his customers were referred by friends, so there was no need for advertising.

Later, the car insurance I purchased happened to come with a free on-site oil and filter replacement service from this brand. After the staff finished their work at my home, they also took the initiative to help me check the tires, brakes, lights, coolant, batteries and other items.

From these two experiences, we can see that the brand's on-site maintenance service is very formal, professional and careful. Its "last meter" includes many unexpected services, such as "full-process recording by camera, sealing of oil samples, free filter element fees by posting on WeChat Moments, and multiple additional safety checks".

It can be seen that the brand's "last 1 meter" that exceeded expectations can not only cultivate loyal users, but also stimulate self-propagation and reduce marketing communication, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Convenient and fast door-to-door maintenance service

As O2O entrepreneurship continues to cool down, most door-to-door service businesses have gone bankrupt or closed down. But today, there are still some on-site mobile phone repair businesses that continue to develop healthily.

Recently, my friends and I have used some brands and made appointments for door-to-door replacement of screens and earpieces, and the overall experience was good.

First of all, online ordering is convenient and fast, and you don’t have to go out to find a store. Secondly, the prices are cheap, some are about half the price of those in stores. Finally, the service attitude of the staff was relatively good, and there were no additional items or charges.

The reason for this is that, on the one hand, he provides door-to-door service and is alone in the consumer's territory, which objectively means he no longer has the natural advantage of "bullying customers with his big store and using the majority to defeat the minority" that he has when he is in a store.

What's more important is that they generally adopt a management mechanism that uses cameras to record the entire process, similar to that of home maintenance brand D. During maintenance work, the staff will set up a mobile phone on the table to record the entire work process.

Doing so effectively avoids situations where maintenance personnel have bad attitudes and charge unreasonable fees.

“The last 1 meter”: improving product experience and discovering investment opportunities

By paying attention to the "last meter" of the user group and going deep into the users and scenarios, we can also discover business opportunities and improve products.

When Shi Yuzhu was developing Melatonin, he personally spent several months going to parks frequented by the elderly to chat and do research. He also squatted next to the health care product shelves in the supermarket, carefully observing some subtle behavioral characteristics of consumers when purchasing health care products, and based on this, improved the placement of goods and the design of the outer packaging to attract the attention of target consumers.

When he switched to online games , he spent another year playing games all day long to understand the game design and gameplay, and to gain insight into the players' psychology and needs.

Shi Yuzhu paid so much attention to grasping the "last meter" and gaining a deep understanding of consumer needs, which ultimately led to the success of Melatonin and the game " Zhengtu ".

The book "Tencent Biography" mentions many cases, which reflect the professionalism and pragmatic style of Tencent, especially the senior executives such as Ma Huateng , who carefully grasp the "last 1 meter". Based on this, they continue to improve their products and retain users, thereby continuing to achieve huge success for their products.

For example, Ma Huateng discovered that ICQ, the originator of instant messaging software, had a design that only stored user information and friend lists locally without synchronizing them to the network. This doesn't seem to be a big problem in the United States because users have their own computers.

But more than a decade ago, the situation in China was not like this. Many people do not have their own computers, but instead access the Internet at work, Internet cafes, or with friends and relatives. So they improved the product and stored user information and friend lists on the server. This way, users can retrieve information no matter which computer they use.

They also slimmed down the product installation package based on the current domestic Internet speed situation. At that time, most Chinese people still accessed the Internet through 28K or 56K dial-up, and the speed was as slow as a snail. Foreign ICQ installation packages are often several megabytes in size, and it takes dozens of minutes to download them once. Therefore, they used technical means to compress the QQ installation package to the extreme, greatly improving the user experience .

In addition to improving products, penetrating the "last meter" also created an investment myth.

Back then, MIH, a famous South African investment company, came to China to look for projects. Their approach was not to stay in the office to read reports or listen to roadshows, but to go directly to the "last meter" - Internet cafes in various cities.

After visiting many Internet cafes, they were surprised to find that almost all the computers in the Internet cafes had a software called OICQ (the early name of QQ). Based on this, they concluded that this must be a powerful company and then made an investment decision.

Today, MIH is Tencent's largest shareholder, owning 30% of the shares, equivalent to a market value of US$100 billion. Going deep into the "last meter" created such an investment myth.

How to control the “last meter”?

Above, we introduced cases from different fields and brands, which have completely different positive and negative performances in the “last meter”.

Now the question is, what can we do to control this critical "last meter"?

This can be done through five aspects: "all employees attach great importance to it, use the product frequently, establish a management and control mechanism, listen to customer service recordings, and actively search for feedback."

1. All employees attach great importance to it: attach importance to it in heart and culture

Managers should always "remember their original intention, respect users, and cherish traffic ", and create a working atmosphere and corporate culture of "user first, down-to-earth".

This point is easy to understand and I will not elaborate on it.

2. Use products frequently: Managers and employees must frequently use their own products

Products are the foundation of a company. The company's managers should lead by example and frequently use their own products. In this way, we can always grasp the product experience and operation status, stay down-to-earth, understand user needs, and create an atmosphere in the entire company that values ​​products and pays attention to users.

Although 7-Eleven convenience store founder Toshifumi Suzuki and Apple's chief design officer Jonathan Ive hold high positions, they still maintain an in-depth focus on their products and businesses all year round, which is admirable.

In Toshifumi Suzuki's autobiography "The Philosophy of Retail", he mentioned that during the 40 years since he founded 7-Eleven, he maintained a habit of driving to the gym every weekend morning and passing by several 7-Eleven convenience stores on his way back at noon to buy some items for his family. It is precisely because of this personal understanding of the business situation year after year that Toshifumi Suzuki and his team have been able to grasp the ever-changing needs of users and create the business myth of 7-Eleven.

I once saw a video interview with Jonathan Ive, then Apple's senior vice president, and it was impressive how focused he was on his business. The interview lasted about ten minutes in total. Jonathan sat at a table and talked about the design of Apple notebooks. The table was filled with the one-piece aluminum main structure used in Apple notebooks. During the interview, he picked up a structural sample from time to time for a specific demonstration.

In this regard, managers of domestic companies such as Xiaomi and Didi have set a good example. For example, Lei Jun of Xiaomi often uses his own mobile phone and wears a Xiaomi bracelet on his wrist. When Didi was in its early stages, its founder would spend half a day every Friday trying out the product and taking taxis around Beijing.

However, many companies, especially some large companies, have middle and senior managers who have long been out of business. In addition, the product line is too long, with dozens of products of all sizes, so it is easy for dangerous situations to occur where some products have never been used personally. Therefore, it is impossible for these managers to always understand the actual product experience. Moreover, due to a lack of understanding of the actual situation, they often make some wrong guidance on product direction and experience based on their own assumptions.

If leaders don't pay much attention to the products, then the grassroots employees will naturally not care so much either. At work, I am already tortured to death by the lackluster products and the internal friction that makes me vomit blood. After get off work, I rarely use my own products. Some people even "have affairs" and fall in love with their competitors' products. As a result, many unreasonable product designs and even major bugs are exposed in broad daylight and left in the released products. The staff are unaware of the system because they rarely use it, let alone proactively discovering points for improving the experience or making major product innovations.

3. Establish a control mechanism: record the event and conduct follow-up visits

It is impossible for managers to personally visit every user's "last mile", but they can establish mechanisms to ensure that front-line employees implement institutional processes and serve users enthusiastically.

First, you can refer to the practices of the door-to-door car maintenance and mobile phone repair brands mentioned above, that is, record the entire process . By doing so, we can effectively avoid situations like the one mentioned above where front-line employees of a certain used car brand committed favoritism and fraud.

Secondly, we must do a good job of following up with phone calls . Normally, even if problems arise, most people will just be dissatisfied, silently give up on the product, and vote with their feet. Only a few people will take the time and energy to proactively call customer service, or speak up and complain on social platforms. Being scolded is not the worst thing, the worst thing is no one cares.

Therefore, it is necessary to establish an active user return visit mechanism to always understand the public sentiment. If there was a follow-up mechanism, I'm afraid that all the bad product experience issues I've personally experienced mentioned above could have been discovered and resolved in a timely manner.

In the early stages of product development, you can conduct full follow-up visits to all users. In the middle and late stages, as the number of users increases, you can choose to conduct sample follow-up visits. But in any case, the follow-up mechanism is indispensable.

In terms of telephone follow-up, I found that auto 4S stores do a very good job, which is worth learning from.

4. Listen to customer service recordings: Hear the problem from customer service recordings

In previous understanding and practice, customer service had special positions and departments. Personnel in departments such as product development and operations do not need to face the user's voice directly, they just need to wait to receive "work orders" from the customer service department. However, such a setting has many problems, such as causing distortion or even loss of important information from user feedback.

In addition, since customer service staff usually do not have sufficient product technical background and the skills and awareness to solve problems in a mechanism-based manner, many recurring systemic problems are hidden.

Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that customer service recordings are a treasure trove.

Listening to dozens or hundreds of phone recordings will not only allow you to quickly understand the business, but also allow you to directly hear user feedback and complaints, thereby discovering problems on the front line. Company managers and core personnel in products, R&D, operations, marketing, etc. should often listen to customer service recordings. This is also the most cost-effective way to stay "down-to-earth" and grasp the "last 1 meter" at any time.

5. Actively search for feedback: Go online to get user feedback

You can also take the initiative to go to Weibo, forums, Zhihu and other platforms to search for keywords related to products and experiences, collect user feedback, and follow up in a timely manner.

For example, if you search for keywords like "navigation is a rip-off" on Weibo, you can find a lot of feedback from users about their bad experiences with navigation software. Staff can also join user WeChat groups and QQ groups to understand the problems users encounter and their expectations for the products. On the one hand, doing so can help find problems with the product, and on the other hand, it shows that the company values ​​users and responds quickly, and it can also win back users who have had a bad experience.

Conclusion

Tony (Zhang Zhidong), one of the founders of Tencent, also pointed out in a speech that "aiming high and aiming high is prone to failure."

The "last meter" is not only the key to the final implementation of the corporate strategy, but also the source of strategic decisions. Only by going deep into the user front line can we discover the real user needs, continuously iterate, improve and perfect the product, and ultimately make strategic decisions.

Users' perception of brands and products is built through all the details of the "last meter". No user will pay for your so-called "strategy and pattern" that you made 10,000 kilometers away.

Managers should have a clear understanding of this. While "discussing strategy and pattern", they can adopt the following means to control the "last meter" of the product:

1. All employees attach great importance to: never forget the original intention, keep feet on the ground, respect users, and cherish traffic.
2. Use products frequently: Both managers and employees should use their products frequently.
3. Establish a control mechanism: record videos on site and make follow-up calls afterwards to ensure that nothing goes wrong.
4. Listen to customer service recordings: Customer service recordings are treasures, and managers should always listen and dig for treasures.
5. Actively search for feedback: Search on Weibo, WeChat , and forums to actively obtain feedback and follow up.

Only in this way can we avoid the tragedy of "having a good hand of cards such as the trend, capital, talents, and strategies, but playing them badly in the end." Only in this way can we avoid dying in the "last meter".

Now think about it, what about the "last meter" of your product? Do you have control over it?