成为极致“用户企业”！ | 马蹄社×极氪游学

This article is a takeaway from马蹄社's visit to ZEEKR, focusing on the automaker's practical experience in building a customer-centric enterprise. Key insights are as follows:

1. ZEEKR's core positioning is to be a "user enterprise," where users are not only consumers but also product co-creators. It has rolled out full-lifecycle user co-creation across all business links, and this user-value-centric system forms ZEEKR's hard-to-replicate competitive moat.

2. User co-creation has replicable, concrete operating methods: collect feedback through its in-house online community app, hold regular offline user meetings and open house events across China, and invite users to participate in the full product development process. For example, ZEEKR implemented all of the 10 most frequently requested user suggestions in its 5.0 vehicle system update.

3. Key lessons for user operations: ZEEKR argues that user operations should not be overhyped. It is only a catalyst for business conversion, and must be built on a solid foundation of strong products, reasonable pricing, and positive word of mouth. It has also introduced a simple, actionable "group research method" to measure operation effectiveness, which addresses a core pain point for user operations in the auto industry.

ZEEKR's full-link experience in building a user-centric brand offers high reference value for brands across all industries. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Brand positioning: "User enterprise" is its core positioning, embedded across product R&D, marketing and organizational building. By building multiple user touchpoints to close the gap between the brand and users, ZEEKR has built a systematic competitive moat centered on user value that competitors cannot surpass with isolated imitation.

2. Product R&D: Leveraging the software-iterable feature of new energy vehicles, ZEEKR delegates product definition power to users, inviting them to participate in the full process of product definition, design, R&D and iteration. It collects user demand through a combination of online and offline channels, quickly implements high-frequency user suggestions, and continuously optimizes user experience.

3. User operations: ZEEKR summarizes the differences between automotive user operations and internet user operations, proposes targeted operation methods for complex, high-priced products, and clarifies that user operations act as a booster rather than the core of business.

4. Organizational support: It breaks down traditional hierarchical structures, builds a decentralized user-centric organization, and delegates senior management authority to support the implementation of user co-creation.

As a new brand founded only three years ago, ZEEKR's growth experience offers many actionable lessons for emerging brand sellers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Differentiated growth opportunities: New energy products have the feature of continuous software iteration. New brands can leverage this category characteristic to build full-link user co-creation as their core selling point, open up a differentiated competitive path, quickly close the distance with users, and build customer loyalty.

2. Actionable lessons for user operations: For high-price, low-frequency products with long conversion funnels, brands should not blindly copy internet user operation methods. Instead, they can adopt ZEEKR's user group research method to measure operation effectiveness: after defining the operation funnel, split users into reached and unreached groups, and compare core metrics such as satisfaction and conversion rate between the two groups. Only scale the operation after it is verified effective, which solves the problem of difficulty in measuring operation effect.

3. Risk reminder: Do not overhype user operations. It is only a booster for transaction conversion, and can only work effectively when built on a solid foundation of strong products, reasonable pricing and positive word of mouth.

4. Organizational adjustment insights: New brands can adjust their structure to be more decentralized, delegate authority, improve organizational agility, and respond to user demand faster.

ZEEKR's user enterprise model offers many insights for product upgrading and digital transformation for manufacturing factories. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Shift in product design and production demand: Next-generation smart products represented by new energy vehicles have software iteration capabilities similar to smartphones. Factories need to abandon the traditional mindset of one-time production and delivery, and shift to full-lifecycle product management, continuously iterating and optimizing products based on user feedback to improve long-term user experience.

2. New business opportunities: The user co-creation model can help factories build differentiated competitive advantages. Factories can follow ZEEKR's example to open up R&D and design links to users, involve users in the process, produce products that better fit user demand, close the gap between the brand and users, and build a hard-to-surpass competitive moat.

3. Insights for digital and organizational transformation: ZEEKR drives growth through a combination of decentralization and digitalization. Manufacturing factories can adopt this model in their own transformation: break down traditional hierarchical structures, delegate authority to frontline teams, turn frontline staff into collectors of user demand, and users into sources of product innovation, to improve the organization's response speed to user demand.

This article shares the pain points and proven solutions of user-centric transformation in the new energy vehicle industry, offering high reference value for service providers serving the physical sector. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trend: The entire new energy vehicle industry is currently transforming into user-centric enterprises. User co-creation, full-link user operations and user-centric organizational building have become mainstream industry demands, and related service demand will continue to grow.

2. Core client pain points: Traditional automakers face three core pain points when transforming to user-centric operations. First, car purchase is not an impulse purchase, making it hard to quantify the conversion contribution of different channels. Second, auto products are complex with scattered user focus, making it hard to unify operation actions. Third, the conversion funnel is long, making it hard to track changes at each funnel node, and traditional single-user research methods cannot measure operation effectiveness.

3. Proven solutions: ZEEKR proposes the user group research method to solve the effect measurement problem: after defining the touchpoints in the operation funnel, split users into reached and unreached groups, compare core metrics including satisfaction, net promoter score (NPS) and conversion rate between the two groups, and only scale the operation after verifying its effectiveness. It also reminds clients not to overhype user operations, and to first solidify the foundation of product, pricing and word of mouth.

ZEEKR's growth model clarifies brand demand for platforms and provides reference for operation and investment sourcing directions. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Current brand demand for platforms: More and more brands are exploring the user co-creation model, and require platforms to provide tools and ecosystems that support full-link user operations, online-offline integration for user feedback collection, and multi-touchpoint user engagement, to help brands implement their user co-creation strategies.

2. Insights for platform operation management: When platforms provide operation solutions to merchants, they need to adjust approaches based on category characteristics. For high-price, low-frequency categories with long conversion funnels, platforms should not copy the user operation assessment methods for fast-moving consumer goods and internet businesses. Instead, they can promote ZEEKR's proven group comparison research method to help merchants reasonably measure operation effectiveness.

3. Investment sourcing direction: New brands like ZEEKR, which focus on user co-creation and have built complete systematic capabilities, hold hard-to-surpass competitive moats and strong growth potential, making them high-quality acquisition targets. Platforms should prioritize connecting with these differentiated new brands.

4. Risk reminder: When platforms promote the user operation concept, they should guide merchants to take a rational view: clarify that user operations are only a booster, and the core of business is still product, pricing and word of mouth, to prevent merchants from blind investment.

ZEEKR's exploration of the user enterprise model is an important new trend in the current automotive industry, providing a high-quality research sample for industrial research. Core research value is as follows:

1. New industrial trend: Thanks to the software-iterable feature of new energy vehicles, the industry is shifting from selling one-off products to providing full-lifecycle user services. User enterprise and full-link user co-creation have become a new industrial development direction, completely different from the operation logic of traditional automakers.

2. Summary of a new business model: ZEEKR has built a complete new business model centered on user co-creation, which runs through product R&D, user operations and organizational architecture. It defines users as both consumers and product innovators, and ultimately builds a systematic competitive moat that cannot be surpassed by competitors' imitation of isolated links.

3. New exploration of organizational innovation: ZEEKR broke the traditional hierarchical organizational structure of traditional automakers, explored a decentralized user-centric organizational model, and drove organizational agility through authority delegation combined with digitalization, providing a new research sample for organizational transformation of traditional manufacturing enterprises.

4. It supplements theoretical and practical research on user operations for complex categories, solves the problem of difficulty in measuring user operation effectiveness for high-price complex products, and enriches the research content of user operations.