Allen Zhang on Payments, WeCom, and WeChat’s Aspirations

Allen Zhang’s early-2016 speech — Part 6 11. On payments Many colleagues have said that I rarely mention WeChat Pay in my public talks. I rarely mention it because there is no need to. Often, when something no longer needs to be mentioned, it means that part of the service is already working especially well. The best service is the kind users do not even notice. You may not even think about the feature. When it is time to pay, you simply take out WeChat and scan a QR code. An experience that works quietly in the background is the best user experience a product can offer. --- 12. On Enterprise WeChat If Enterprise WeChat were positioned merely as an internal communication tool for companies, I think its use cases and significance would be much more limited. Its value grows when it extends beyond the company. The next stage of Enterprise WeChat is built on a new idea: every employee should become a point of contact for the company’s services. People themselves are the service—and it is authenticated service. For example, we may add delivery couriers on WeChat. Each time a new courier arrives, though, you may end up adding another new WeChat contact. Many friends have complained to me that, after adding too many strangers, they no longer dare to post on Moments. And when they actually need to reach a courier to send a package, that person may already have left the job. This points to a real use case. In everyday life, we would often rather have a person help us with something than open an app or a mini program. People can respond more flexibly, and the service can be more attentive. For instance, you can book a hotel online. But if you need to change the dates or cancel, handling it through the app can be cumbersome. You may have to contact a human customer-service agent. That is when a person matters most; a human interface is also the friendliest one. If an employee at a 4S dealership adds you through Enterprise WeChat, you can think of that person as your mini program. When you open the conversation, because the employee is an Enterprise WeChat user, you will see the dealership’s service menu beneath the chat. You can use the services right there. It is a little like the menu under an official account, but you can also speak directly with the employee and receive an immediate reply. The next time you need the dealership, your first choice may be to open your conversation with that employee rather than search for the dealership’s mini program. This creates an opportunity for companies: every employee can become an outward-facing service contact, carrying the company’s mini program with them wherever they go. That is one direction Enterprise WeChat will pursue. I believe it will appeal to businesses because it lets every employee provide service directly. In this model, customer loyalty is high. --- 13. On the future As WeChat approached one billion users, we never thought the number of users—or the size of the population—was especially important in itself. Many people use population as a measure of their potential market, but I do not see it that way. The population is finite; services keep emerging. In the past, a decade might have counted as an era. But since the internet, and especially the mobile internet, came along, I have felt that three to five years can now make an era. Times change faster, and the needs they create change faster too. In this environment, innovation is the only way to meet the future. I think this is also an important moment to consider WeChat’s future. It has been eight years, and its user base has reached one billion. The team is asking how WeChat should face the new challenges of its next eight years. Those challenges do not come from competitors; they come from users. Users change over time. As I said, three to five years can make an era, and we must respond to a new generation of users and the needs it brings. When we look at what WeChat has changed over the years, we feel a real sense of accomplishment. People often ask what makes us different. One difference is that, when we think about a problem or what to build, we often ask ourselves: What is the meaning of doing this? I know many teams do not ask what it means. They ask only, “What are our KPIs?” To be honest, from the day the WeChat team was formed, we have never set out to pursue KPIs. That has not prevented the team from getting better and better. Take mini programs, for example. If we had tried to build them around a KPI, we would not have known how to set one. There was no suitable KPI to define, and if we had insisted on one, we might never have built the product. The team has developed a habit of asking what lies behind each feature and service—what meaning, or what dream, it embodies. If a feature is built purely to drive traffic and we cannot think of what value it would bring to users— If a feature is built purely to drive traffic and we cannot think of what value it brings users, then something is wrong with it, or it will not last. I believe this is a powerful reason the team has made it this far: we look for even the smallest bit of meaning behind every part of the work. That helps us make the right choices. This is the meaning we seek behind our products and features. -- What is WeChat’s aspiration? As I said, for individuals, it is to become each person’s best tool and friend. As a platform, it is to build a marketplace where creators can realize value. Between the wall and the egg, WeChat seems always to side with the egg. If you grow large, WeChat will restrict you; if you are just starting out, WeChat will support you. That is why we rarely think about competitors. WeChat has no competitors; there is no need to keep assigning competitors to us. If there is a competitor, it is ourselves: can our organizational capabilities keep pace with changes in the times? WeChat is not anxious either. There is no need to say that every move WeChat makes means it is anxious again. So there is no need to project your own anxiety onto WeChat. “Among all things, hope is the most beautiful.” Many people know this line. I often think that if WeChat cannot bring users even a little more hope, we have no way to judge whether what we are doing is right or wrong. That is one of our measures. #EssenceOfGrowth2