Special Topic | [Customer Management] Learning "Tesla" to "Marketing Model"

Since the beginning of the 4G era, the mode of operator customer operation has been determined to "do outbound calls" to carry out accurate package upgrades, "do contracts" to carry out package contracts of credit purchase mode, and "do experience" to carry out product contracts that promise consumption models. It can be said that relying on the advantage of user scale, the three operators still maintain rapid value growth in the backward business model.

However, the negative effects are also obvious. On the one hand, operators lose the trust of customers when they make small money, because the opacity of business tariffs has led to a high number of customer complaints for a long time, and has become the main target of media crusade. On the other hand, due to the lack of demographic dividend advantages, the traditional individual market business is indeed difficult to have room for valuable growth. The government-enterprise market, the home market and emerging services will become an important driving force for operators' customer operations.

Therefore, how to do a good job in customer operation in the 5G era, Zizhi Communication Research Institute recommends that operators learn from Tesla's successful marketing model, transform the marketing model, explore their own 5G business model, and continue to maintain the stable and efficient growth of customer operations.

1.1 Tesla's Operating Model

The automobile is a typical traditional manufacturing industry, but Tesla has brought it from the Detroit era to the Silicon Valley era in thinking. Tesla, which makes cars, has placed the company in Silicon Valley rather than Detroit from the start and run the company by a team with Internet DNA.

In the Tesla team, there are Apple executives in charge of user experience to graft the electronic genes of the consumer Internet, chief technology officers with aerospace industry backgrounds who implant aerospace technology into the automobile manufacturing process, and Toyota's technical staff in charge of production to control production.

(1) Create new value for customers with new technologies

Technical value is the foundation, but whether technical value can create customer value is the key to growth. For Tesla, its strong technology research and development capabilities and the scientific and technological barriers it has established are indispensable, and Tesla's value choice for its customer needs is also an important factor in its breakthrough development. Tesla's first choice of main audience is those who love environmental protection and love technology.

In other words, tesla first did a subtraction when it entered the market - serving a small number of people, adopting a focused product positioning and customer group positioning strategy.

In terms of product positioning, Musk does not position Tesla as a non-high-end electric vehicle in everyone's impression, but has created a new category - dream super sports car, which is reflected in its 100-kilometer acceleration of 4.3 seconds, pure electric, zero emissions, 17-inch LCD screen central control, 3G Internet access, and software upgrades to improve vehicle configuration and other performance, and its price is more than 20% lower than that of competitor sports cars.

So the early angel customers came mainly from: stars in Silicon Valley and Hollywood at that time. Schwarzenegger, the early founder of Google that we are familiar with, was one of Tesla's first users. The most important label of these customers is not bad money, insensitive to battery life, a sense of environmental responsibility, and a star appeal.

(2) Continue to create lifelong value for customers

In addition to better performance, Tesla is also constantly digging deeper in the user experience, and trying to meet the needs of core customers to the extreme.

For the era when everyone was still discussing how electric vehicles could catch up with the footsteps of traditional cars by continuously improving their own experience, Tesla directly told customers: I am not producing a substitute for traditional cars, but a carrier for future driving experience.

In addition to creating value for customers, Tesla pays more attention to the maintenance of customer value - to create lifelong value for customers to improve loyalty:

Tesla can not only ensure that customers can maintain or replace batteries for free within 8 years, but also is committed to building solar panel charging outlets in the United States to solve user charging problems. In the future, no matter whether it is east, west, south or north, as long as there are Tesla charging outlets nearby, customers can use it for free.

Tesla's value choice to prioritize the needs of high-end customers has also established an excellent competitive barrier to some extent.

(3) Disintermediated direct marketing experience marketing

In terms of marketing model, Tesla's core marketing model is "disintermediation + fan bonding economy".

In the past, the marketing channel for cars was only 4S stores, or through car dealers. But Tesla abandoned the original model, but chose to establish an experience store and carry out Direct Internet sales.

In terms of marketing, Tesla's hard advertising costs are almost zero. Tesla does not invest in marketing in traditional media, it does not do any TV and print media advertising, but mainly relies on the dual role of "opinion leader + fan economy" under digital media to promote marketing.

Another very important model for Tesla is the booking model, which transforms the original supply chain model into a chain based on customer demand.

In complete contrast to the traditional sales model, Tesla will only produce the vehicle after making a reservation and paying part of the cash, and then pay the supplier. Depending on the model, there will be different deposits. It is this booking model that allows Tesla to have sufficient cash flow, and someone helped Tesla calculate an account: assuming that in three years, a total of 20,000 car owners book vehicles, then the reservation fee alone can be as much as $1 billion. Such a huge amount of money can not only support the research and development of new models, but also ensure the normal operation of the company.

When it comes to Tesla's services, although Tesla did not have its own service store for a long time, the cloud service provided by its control center can help the car diagnose and solve most of the small problems; if the problem control center cannot be solved, then you can contact Tesla's service center. The establishment of this after-sales service system not only facilitates the owner, but also greatly reduces the workload of Tesla's after-sales service department.

1.2 Operational transformation of operators

In fact, the leaders of operators have also keenly discovered these problems mentioned above, and actively carry out operational transformation in 2022, focusing on:

(1) China Mobile's digital integration operation

The main line of China Mobile in 2021 is to "promote the transformation of digital intelligence and accelerate high-quality development". Digital intelligence is an effective combination of digitalization and intelligence, China Mobile to create a smart brain, to achieve the convergence of "passenger flow, logistics, capital flow, information flow", facing customer (C) needs, empowering B (channel), and carrying out smart marketing and smart operation. The core role of the new marketing service system is to match, and the bilateral long tail is matched.

Omni-channel, including online and offline channel system. Solve the problem of who will sell. Strengthen channel mutual drainage and cross-marketing to meet the one-stop digital consumption needs of users in multiple scenarios. Through "six unifications" and in-depth empowerment, jointly build digital life stores; for mobile phone stores, continue to carry out "three circles and four advances, joint operation", deepen close cooperation with "national chains, local chains, manufacturer channels"; for e-commerce platforms, jointly build 5G cloud stores, through the opening of online zones and other forms, to achieve convenient handling and scenario-based marketing of contracts and package products.

China Mobile is vigorously promoting the construction of "business + data + technology" smart middle office. Relying on SaaS-based middle office services, we will create "smart stores" to achieve user-centric scenario-oriented intelligent operations for all users, all products, and all touchpoints, which is easier to identify the personalized needs of users' digital lives, create experiences, provide surprises, and build differentiated service advantages.

(2) China Unicom's traditional four-sales transformation

China Unicom will fully empower traditional social channels, unswervingly promote the transformation of single traditional store sales to "four sales", transform into multiple roles of drainage, sales and delivery, and expand new partners with low operating costs, flexible roles, and online and offline integrated operations.

In the transformation to "distribution", with the store as the center, continue to promote the "bee action" model, use marketing tools to continue to rapidly expand the 1-3 km of different businesses and partners around the store, while the store expands the light contact point of the volume recovery store, restore the store volume assessment.

In the transformation to "online sales", on the basis of using Wodian stores and cloud stores, we will accelerate the online recruitment of partners with drainage sales capabilities, and drive partners Douyin and Kuaishou live streaming drainage.

In the transformation to "marketing", partners are encouraged to go out to market, 7 * 24 hours of sales, choose community channels to open door-to-door delivery capabilities, and choose Samsung and above channels to open up corporate affairs.

In the transformation to "store sales", we will fully empower, carry out financial, pan-terminal supply chain, stock authority empowerment, and implement high-quality and efficient development. The preferred core channel adopts 5G terminal + package + installment sales, and preferably selects community channels to carry out pan-terminal + smart home + installment sales.

(3) China Telecom's digital marketing transformation

China Telecom has specifically promoted the transformation of channels from three aspects: strengthening offline fundamentals, increasing the scale of online sales, and enhancing digital marketing capabilities.

For offline stores, China Telecom requires optimized layout, stable stores with high sales volume, cleaning up inefficient stores, and strengthening the professional operation of stores and the sales of chain terminals; while online, enhance intensive capabilities, expand flagship stores, and expand information flow. At the same time, it is also necessary to rely on enterprise WeChat and micro-stores to create a model of online sales of offline stores, expand contact points and strengthen operations.

Promote channel operation innovation, build an omni-channel, all-touch, all-closed-loop online and offline digital and integrated operation system, and integrate the sales and channel development division and the electronic channel operation center into an omni-channel operation center.

1.3 Marketing Strategies of Zizhi Communications

From the analysis of the current marketing strategy of operators' personal markets, it is still mainly focused on improving channel customer traffic through digital empowerment, so as to transform and achieve marketing conversion. Although it also reflects the integration of personal business and family business, and also enhances the value of new business from the perspective of brand equity, there is still an improvement and improvement of "split management".

1. The government-enterprise cloud business is the most profitable industry for future operators, and the power of channels cannot be supported;

2. The product is still the traditional voice, traffic and broadband, and lacks value improvement space;

3, the channel is still the traditional store sales, find a way to get customers, the more channels the heavier the burden;

Learning from "Tesla" the marketing model is actually to learn from the excellent, learn from each other and improve the shortcomings!

(1) Focus on customer needs, continuous product innovation

Each market has different label customer needs, and Mobile has now revived the three major brands of "Global Pass", "Shenzhou Line" and "Dynamic Zone", but there is no obvious difference from the product point of view.

Tesla's electric vehicles are not able to meet different customer needs, and operators' mobile phone cards are also the same reason, and products must be packaged around the perspective of customer needs. For example, if Global Connect focuses on business elites and customers who run around, package tariffs and membership benefits should focus on packaging products in combination with travel and field work needs.

For example, shenzhou line focuses on local resident groups, focusing on local life customers, package tariffs and membership rights should focus on meeting the communication needs of local residents packaging products. For example, the dynamic zone focuses on young people under the age of 20, focusing on the trend of Z era, package tariffs and membership benefits should focus on packaging products that meet the communication needs of young customers.

In this way, around different product customer groups, choose different label customers, sign a Gu Ailing-style brand star endorsement, and let the most labeled stars influence customers. The operator's most successful brand in the past 5 years is "Tencent King Card", which aims at the communication needs of young people and achieves full coverage of young people with the help of Tencent's drainage method.

(2) Experience-centered channel network construction

Customers now basically have nothing to do without running the operator's business hall, because regular business can be handled online. Self-built business has become a business hall for middle-aged and elderly customers, so in recent years, channel transformation lies more in pan-channel cooperation to cut off the passenger flow of other outlets to transform operator business. At present, the "fast power cooperation" model has become the main carrier of the growth of telecommunications and Unicom services.

However, the biggest drawback of pan-channel cooperation is that the business explanation is not clear, the customer experience is poor, and it is very easy to lead to extreme complaints caused by unclear business explanations, mainly concentrated in the credit purchase business.

In the 5G era, more new services, more new experiences, and more good products

If it is still the current operating model, it will be difficult to have good business results.

Therefore, operators' digital empowerment needs to focus more on the construction and operation of offline experience stores.

1. 5G experience hall, the experience of normalizing the 5G government and enterprise business and the holding of offline salons and symposiums, bringing business owners together in the operator's experience hall in the form of community operation.

2. Smart home experience hall, be sure to effectively explain and experience the family products. Especially in terms of cloud gaming experience, it must be a children's paradise, and there is no traffic.

The mobile early tried Migu coffee, but the project ended without a problem, the key point is that the operator must not be a simple coffee shop owner, but through the coffee shop experience hall, let more customers enter the store to communicate, become the next effective communication carrier.

In addition, in the expansion of elderly users, operators have also made a lot of efforts. In addition to launching an exclusive filial piety card for the elderly, a special area for elderly users has been set up in multiple stores. Provide convenient access for elderly users. In addition, store staff can unite with community staff to carry out the teaching of mobile phone operation functions for the elderly / fire prevention, theft and fraud prevention knowledge popularization activities from time to time in the store, in addition to teaching elderly users to better use communication services, the safety knowledge can be integrated into it, so that elderly users can live more comfortably and improve the brand reputation of operators.

In fact, what our operators need most now is a change of mentality.

From the "demographic dividend" to the "people's heart dividend", with the previous short and fast marketing model, it really can't make customers satisfied.

Tesla has become a big guy in the electric vehicle industry, technical advantages are only the foundation, and more importantly, it is to harvest the "heart" of users. Most car owners in the 4S car purchase pit experience, let them unforgettable, the same, no trap, no routine Tesla sales service, just so simple harvest success.

In the 5G era, the basis for the success of operators' customer operations must be "people's hearts dividends", with good products that truly satisfy customers, build a good experience center for teaching customers, and continue to create communication value for customers. This is the essence of our learning of "Tesla".