"Exclusive" Unguarded: Didi Security System Survey

At 3:42 p.m. on August 24, a young woman in Yueqing City, Wenzhou, asked for help from customer service on the Didi app: "My friend was taken to the mountain by the driver of the Didi hitchhiker, and we can't contact her!" ”

Customer service gave her this reply: "The relevant department will contact you within 1 hour, please be patient." ”

In the next hour, the user called Didi customer service seven times, and each time he got the response of "will deal with it as soon as possible" and "there will be a security expert who will contact you", and even after she said that she had called the police, she still got the same reply.

Until about 8 p.m. that night, Didi customer service finally told her that the relevant information of the owner of the downwind car had been provided to the police.

In the early morning of the next day, the police found the body of the 20-year-old victim girl under the cliff on the side of Yanglin Line Mountain in Tanxi Town. At this time, according to her, she was killed by the owner of the downwind car, Zhong Mou, for more than 12 hours.

Just over three months after the Zhengzhou flight attendant was killed in a Didi hitchhiker, the "824" Wenzhou massacre once again shocked the whole country, and Didi fell into the most serious public opinion crisis since its inception. On August 25, Didi publicly apologized on Weibo and promised triple damages for "all criminal cases that occur on future platforms." On the 27th, Didi's hitchhiking business rolled off the production line nationwide, and Huang Jieli, general manager of the hitchhiking business unit, and Jin Jinhong, vice president of customer service, were dismissed. On the 28th, Didi Chuxing founder Cheng Wei and president Liu Qing finally spoke out, announcing that the business model of hitchhiking will be re-evaluated, and at the same time, product safety will be comprehensively upgraded, "and the public security department will deeply build a user security protection mechanism".

However, the two young lives could no longer be saved, and the two families were destroyed forever.

In addition to grief and indignation, we try to ask: What kind of security protection mechanism has Didi run so far? Behind the repeated "as soon as possible" situation, who is responsible for the safety of millions of passengers?

<h3>"Please be patient"</h3>

Didi's Tianjin Customer Service Center is located in the TEDA MSD office building in Tanggu District, occupying a full 4 floors, which is particularly busy compared to other floors. The office area is brightly lit 24 hours a day, catching up with the peak of the changing of the guard, often waiting for a long elevator.

The operators here are divided into two categories: outsourced employees and Didi self-employed employees, of which outsourced employees mainly serve as front-line customer service, which is at the bottom of Didi's customer service system and directly faces user complaints from all over the country.

The friend of the Wenzhou victim girl was exposed to this level of customer service on the afternoon of the 24th.

Didi has made a detailed classification of user complaints, up to hundreds, and distributed them to customer service at all levels according to their nature. Front-line customer service can only handle the lightest complaints, such as the driver is late or can't find a location, verbal communication can solve. Serious complaints, such as drivers deliberately taking detours and overcharging, need to submit a second-level customer service, and the second-level customer service will determine whether to compensate in the form of vouchers. More serious complaints, such as verbal or physical conflicts, are submitted to Level 3 Customer Service.

If the complaint is urgent, the front-line customer service can make an "urgent" mark, skip the second-level customer service and submit it directly to the third-level customer service, which is the limit of their terms of reference. Even this permission can not be used casually, the "urgent" list has a certain proportion limit, beyond the limit to deduct wages.

Three levels further up, usually the customer service director, only a small percentage of complaints can reach this level. If the director level is still unable to solve the problem, it will be transferred to the functional departments.

"There are often users who are angry, and even greet the parents of customer service, and we can only apologize repeatedly, because we really don't have this permission." Li Hua told interface news reporters.

At the end of last year, Li Hua went to did first-line customer service at didi's Tianjin call center through an outsourcing company. He first trained for a week, learning various response methods and processes to ensure that he could operate in full accordance with the standards stipulated by Didi's headquarters before officially taking up his post.

Their team is divided into three shifts, each person has to answer 60-70 complaints a day, the average time to answer each complaint is about 8 minutes, and they are not allowed to hang up or reply to content other than the regulations. During the period of work, the mobile phone should be handed over, and the operator and the outside world are basically isolated.

Such a job, the basic salary is only more than 3,000 yuan, according to the number of answers and user satisfaction, there is a part of the performance bonus. If the long-term performance is outstanding, it is expected to become a regular employee of Didi and rise one level in the customer service pyramid.

An informed source who had been a middle-level manager at Didi told the interface reporter: "The cost of self-built customer service teams is too high, it is impossible to build all of them, and the general proportion is 60%-70% outsourcing." In addition to Tianjin, Didi has multiple call centers in Chengdu, Chongqing, Shandong, Jiangxi and other places, and the person estimates that the current size of The entire Didi customer service team should be about 5,000 people.

According to Didi's official data, in 2017, the Didi platform provided more than 7.43 billion services to 450 million users in more than 400 cities across the country, with more than 20 million daily orders.

Such a huge number of orders will inevitably produce a large number of complaints, which means huge labor costs. The multi-level customer service system handles complaints in the form of an assembly line, which can minimize the workload and compress labor costs.

In February 2017, She said at the CTI forum that the customer service center of Internet companies cannot passively wait and solve customer problems, "need to transform to be close to the enterprise value or profit center, and use the new Internet model and new thinking to reshape its own positioning and find value growth points." ”

This is in line with Didi's goals. "Didi plans to go public this year, and has been looking for ways to reduce operating costs since last year, and the last round of financing of $4 billion has not been moved much now." The above-mentioned insider told the interface reporter.

<h3>"The negative that broke out is basically that the money is not enough</h3>."

After layers of customer service screening, a very small number of disputes will eventually arrive at Didi's security center. This is the core department of Didi's internal handling of complaints and accidents, mainly for three types of incidents: traffic accidents, vehicle and passenger disputes, and major accidents.

But the specific responsibilities of this department are not the same as what the outside world imagines.

"Our main job is to determine whether to compensate or not to compensate according to the reports issued by the traffic police, hospitals and public security, and to put it bluntly, it is to wipe the butt." Daniel Zhang, who used to be an urban safety manager at Didi, told interface reporters.

Before 2016, disputes that occurred on Didi's platform were resolved by the customer service department. In April 2016, Didi began to set up an independent safety department, recruiting a group of more experienced employees from insurance companies, vehicle management departments of other enterprises and government traffic management systems to deal with major disputes.

Before joining Didi, Daniel Zhang was responsible for vehicle management at a logistics company. After entering Didi, he found that the situation faced by the 2C business was far more complicated than that of the 2b logistics business.

"The service industry that deals with people such as online car-hailing will produce a large number of disputes every day, and the two sides will say that the public is justified, and the platform is actually difficult to make a ruling that both parties are satisfied with, and can only be based on third-party evidence." Daniel Zhang representation.

Third-party evidence recognized by the Didi Safety Department, including the liability certificate issued by the traffic police, the diagnosis report of the hospital, and the investigation report given by the public security organs. Compared with customer service, the authority of the safety department is much larger, you can punish the illegal driver, you can also give the user or driver who suffered losses cash compensation, but each processing result must be submitted to the Didi headquarters detailed report and judgment basis, if it is considered improper operation, it will be criticized by name at the company's executive meeting, "it is very ugly."

Didi's security department is divided by region, and in a large city like Shanghai, the security team size is about 15 people, and about 70 complaints need to be reviewed every month.

Didi stipulates that every complaint submitted to the Safety Department must be responded to within 24 hours, and the final result must be approved by the complainant.

"If the dispute caused by the car has reached the police station, or if someone enters the hospital, we will determine the responsibility according to the report of the hospital or the police station, and then compensate or punish." In most cases, the two parties to the dispute can be resolved privately through mediation, and the few negatives that come out are generally not enough money. Daniel Zhang said.

He also stressed that as long as the evidence is true, Didi's compensation budget for the security department is not limited, "but in fact, the proportion of compensation paid by us in the end is not high." ”

So, what exactly are the security services doing to prevent Didi's passengers or drivers from being harmed?

"As a platform, it can only be checked from the aspect of driver registration." Daniel Zhang said. The Ministry of Safety will conduct a background check on the driver, and those with criminal records will not be allowed to register. Physical conflict with passengers is another red line, and once confirmed, it is permanently suspended; but the problem is that the platform is often unable to confirm whether the driver has a conflict with the passenger and what kind of conflict has arisen.

The day before the "824" Wenzhou incident, another female passenger was also taken to a remote area when taking the suspect Zhong Mou's hitchhiker, fortunately, the passenger was alert in time and immediately got off the car, and was chased by Zhong mou for hundreds of meters after getting off the car. The passenger immediately complained to Didi's customer service, but the next day, Zhong still got out of the car as usual.

"If the passenger cannot provide audio or video evidence, we have no way to determine that the driver has violated the law." Daniel Zhang said.

<h3>Who will regulate</h3>

In July 2016, the Ministry of Communications issued the Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Reservation Taxi Business Services, which stipulates in Chapter 3, Article 12 of Chapter 3 that vehicles engaged in online ride-hailing business must be equipped with vehicle satellite positioning devices and emergency alarm devices with driving record functions. Some prefecture-level cities have further refined on this basis, for example, Nanjing also requires online ride-hailing vehicles to install devices with in-car image recording functions.

The reality, however, is that these requirements are not strictly enforced. Most of the vehicles on did not have physical positioning and monitoring equipment installed, but only through the mobile phone apps of drivers and passengers, which is one of the important factors that caused the tragedies in Zhengzhou and Wenzhou.

Another situation is that Didi's operational data has not yet been fully connected to the public security system, and in the event of an accident, the public security organs cannot call the Didi platform information in real time.

"Now the compliant online ride-hailing vehicles have all required the installation of positioning and monitoring equipment, and the data must be accessed to the public security system, but it will take time for this measure to be implemented." Daniel Zhang said.

Since August 27, the governments of 14 cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing, have interviewed local Didi companies to strengthen the investigation of online ride-hailing vehicles and to remove all illegal vehicles, which may be expected to improve the safety of online ride-hailing.

But at present, the most effective security measure on the Didi platform is only to "share the itinerary to emergency contacts in real time".

"When you really encounter danger, you still have to call the police as soon as possible." Daniel Zhang stressed it again and again.

In a public apology letter issued on August 28, Cheng Wei and Liu Qing promised that "Didi no longer uses scale and growth as a measure of the company's development, but takes safety as the core assessment indicator, and the organization and resources are fully inclined to the safety and customer service system."

This is not the first time Didi has made a commitment. After the Zhengzhou flight attendant was killed, Didi announced that the hitchhiking car was closed for self-inspection for a week, and the operation and customer service system were fully rectified; and shortly before the Wenzhou massacre, some car owners found that the hitchhiking client quietly opened the passenger information to the owner again.

While protecting the interests of enterprises and promoting economic development, how to protect the rights and interests of users and balance the excessive expansion of enterprises will be the biggest challenge facing the regulatory authorities.

In addition to regulation, the most important thing is the values and mentality within the enterprise. Personal safety is no small matter. Whether it is for Didi, vaccine manufacturers or any other company, if the positioning of the safety department is only to wipe the butt and compensate after the fact, then some accidents that could have been avoided will always happen.

(Li Huahe Daniel Zhang pseudonym)