#FMCG Eight Talks##WPS##Members#After the adjustment of the WPS membership system, there are still value-added services "hidden" outside the membership rights. On April 17, WPS announced the merger of the original WPS members, rice husk members, and super members into a new membership service, WPS Super Member. WPS Super Member provides users with two options: Basic Package and Pro Package, of which the benefits of the Basic Package are basically the same as the original Super Membership Benefits, and the Pro Package adds special rights and interests on top of the Basic Package.
During the "3.15" period, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily investigated and found that in addition to WPS members, super members, and rice husk members displayed prominently on the WPS page, WPS users may also encounter "poster privilege packs" hidden in the corners. On April 17, the latest version of WPS's membership service purchase page still did not remind users that the poster privilege package needs to pay extra. The "nesting doll" payment has been spit out by users for more than a year, why not use this adjustment to explain it clearly in a prominent position? WPS parent company Kingsoft Office only responded: the poster will have a separate benefit package.
Member 3-in-1
"I was always struggling with which one to buy before, but now I want them all", after WPS announced the upgrade of the membership system on April 17, netizens left messages on social platforms.
Before the upgrade, WPS provides users with three types of membership services: Super Member, WPS Member, and Rice Husk Member. WPS members focus on functions, rice husk members focus on materials, super members have both functions and materials, and the most complete and expensive.
After the upgrade, WPS members, rice husk members, and super members are merged into WPS super members, and users can choose a basic package that is more suitable for personal daily use and meets the daily needs of office and learning, or a Pro package that includes professional rights and interests such as teaching and personal business, which is more suitable for professional office needs.
Specific to the benefits, the benefits of the basic package are basically the same as the original super member rights, while enjoying functional rights and resource rights, cloud space 365G (personal account only), Pro package on the basis of the basic package added special rights, such as the total amount of cloud space expanded to 1T, new teaching rights package and personal commercial rights package, the number of full-text translation pages increased from 100 pages per month to 500 pages.
The Beijing Business Daily reporter updated to the latest version of WPS and found that the membership purchase page has been adjusted accordingly, only showing WPS Super Member and Super Member Pro two membership services. The original member can upgrade to the new member by converting the duration and paying the difference.
According to the WPS membership rules, if the original member does not upgrade to the new member, he or she can use the original member product normally until the end of the validity period. The auto-renewal order will always be automatically renewed at the original price and the original member will be renewed. After a new member goes online, the new benefits can only be used by the new member.
What kind of integration it is
"WPS should be a membership adjustment made in combination with the public's usage habits, first of all, general needs, and then personalized needs. It is equivalent to the two forms of 'typical installation' and 'personalized custom installation' when users installed software in the past. It is more reasonable in the form of segmentation, with more choices of general + special free combination, and clearer definition of several mainstream personalized needs," Cui Lili, director of the E-commerce Research Institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, explained to a reporter from Beijing Business Daily.
She speculates that general-purpose apps or services like WPS may be a way to attract users who demand a variety of personalized services, and pay more than ever before.
In 2022, Kingsoft Office's revenue will be 3.885 billion yuan, deducting non-net profit of 939 million yuan, both of which will achieve year-on-year growth, and the domestic personal office service subscription business will contribute 2.05 billion yuan in revenue, still the largest source of revenue for Kingsoft Office, with a year-on-year increase of 39.91%.
Zhang Chengyu, partner of Analysys and head of Analysys Enterprise Digital Center, did not directly link membership adjustment with revenue, he told Beijing Business Daily reporter, "From the perspective of enterprises, this membership system adjustment is to use a unified ID to connect its own product system, which can play a cross-marketing role, and more importantly, the portrait of member users can be more three-dimensional and accurate, laying the foundation for data-driven member value-added services in the future."
Zhang Chengyu does not believe that this is a trend of industry unification, and the premise of unified ID is that the company's own products, services and audiences are relatively unified, otherwise the unified membership system is not feasible.
"Membership upgrades are the trend, new membership systems are simpler, and there are individual benefit packages. If users only want to pay for a certain type of function separately, they can also meet it," said a person from Kingsoft Office when talking about the reason for this membership upgrade. As for what are the individual rights and benefits, whether they include the right to download posters without watermarks, the person only said that they can be viewed in the personal member center later.
The reason why the poster rights are emphasized is because many users have been distressed since 2021.
"I have been using WPS for a long time, the part I need to use is Kingsoft poster, after purchasing a 2-year super membership last year (2021), Kingsoft Poster can download non-watermarked pictures, this year (2022) September can only download 3 pictures a day, in October, I can't download non-watermarked pictures, and now I prompt that I need to pay more money to use it", a user spat out in mid-October 2022.
Special rights are a mystery
During the "3·15" period, the Beijing Business Daily reporter found that at that time, the WPS user personal page showed three types of membership: super member, WPS member, rice husk member, and there was no purchase entrance and prompt for other value-added services, and the rice husk channel featuring the main material did not have a reminder of additional value-added services.
However, when entering the poster entrance of the rice husk channel, a red reminder "Open commercial privileges" appeared at the top of the page. According to the explanation of WPS customer service, commercial privileges are poster privilege packages. "At present, rice husk members do not enjoy the function of exporting posters without watermark per day, and you need to purchase the poster privilege package to use the poster. The Poster Privilege Pack has no limit on the number of times a poster can be exported per day without a watermark", explains WPS Support.
When the Beijing Business Daily reporter logged in to WPS, the page also popped up this introduction: Experience the rice husk membership privilege to enjoy 60+ resource privileges, the privileges include Kingsoft poster, and there is no special indication that Kingsoft poster is a third-party platform.
Is there any Kingsoft poster permission for WPS rice husk members? A relevant person from Kingsoft Office responded to the Beijing Business Daily reporter at the time: "Kingsoft poster and WPS rice husk members do not contain each other, the rights package is clearly written, and this page will not appear before the user places an order, so it will not mislead the user in advance." Now when the user logs in to WPS, this page does not reappear, and we determine that it is an error page that occurs when logging in to a small number of versions. ”
After the adjustment of the membership system, the poster function is not mentioned in the two packages for new members, and users are not reminded that downloading posters without watermarks requires additional fees. In this regard, the relevant person of Kingsoft Office only told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the poster will have a separate rights package.
Perhaps compared with the niche poster function, the AIGC (artificial intelligence generated content) function occupies more energy of Kingsoft Office.
At the bottom of the WPS membership system upgrade poster, WPS announced that WPS Super Members will be fully embedded with AI capabilities. Not long ago, Zhang Qingyuan, CEO of Kingsoft Office, also talked about the way Kingsoft Office implements AIGC: cooperation with technical service providers and investment in start-up companies.
At present, Microsoft, the old rival of Kingsoft Office, launched the Microsoft 365 Copilot service, which can assist users to generate documents, emails, presentations, etc. in Microsoft 365 applications and services, and Baidu and Ali have demonstrated AI office capabilities when they officially announced the AI model.
"The primary challenge of Kingsoft Office is definitely the first-mover advantage of Microsoft 365 Copilot in technology and productization, and WPS is definitely a follower in the short and medium term," Zhang Chengyu said, adding that the opportunity comes from the iteration cycle of Copilot's products and the time of localization breakthroughs in China, which provides a window for WPS to launch the AIGC product system.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Wei Wei