"I have reported to DingTalk twice in the background that the group management function needs to be improved, but you all rejected it and said that there are no plans to optimize it for the time being..."
"DingTalk is Isn’t it just for managers? ”
“Do TO B products need to be social?”
……
A recent discussion within Alibaba During a discussion on DingTalk products, Alibaba employees, known as one of the most picky user groups in China, issued such a challenge to DingTalk.
In the words of DingTalk CEO Ye Jun (nickname: Buqiu), “On the intranet, everyone is teaching DingTalk how to make products.” On his DingTalk interface, there is A special button allows him to enter Alibaba's intranet with one click and search for all posts with the keyword "DingTalk". He will click on it at least once a day.
As an Alibaba employee and a user, according to feedback from people familiar with the matter, many important product PDs and people in charge of DingTalk were brought to the discussion, so that everyone could "retaliate if they have a grudge and complain if they have a grudge." ".
01. Change even if it’s a slap in the face
DingTalk has slightly adjusted the color of the icon, or moved a search box from the side to the middle, which has caused a lot of internal discussion. .
At the beginning of 2021, DingTalk released version 6.0. On the day of the release, there were doubts on Alibaba’s intranet. Some people even made it clear that the PC version 6.0 was not as easy to use as before and they wanted to return the old version.
In the afternoon of the same day, Buqi made a decision, respected the opinions of users, released the download link for the old version, and posted a long post on the intranet to respond to everyone's questions one by one. This long post quickly became a hot search on the intranet, and many people accepted this very sincere "explanation post." Now the number of posts has reached almost 500 floors, and many people are still updating their suggestions for improving DingTalk products.
That day was the 100th day of DingTalk. According to his later recollection, this "little controversy" that the new version was not as good as the old version made many people inside DingTalk a little "hurt", including himself. . When making TO B products, mentality is more important than function, and function is more important than KPI. Everything is based on the user's mind. You cannot make a function for a certain KPI and end up losing your mind. This became something Fuqi often said to the team later.
In the view of the team leader, the entire year of 2021 is also an important milestone in DingTalk product development. Not only Alibaba employees internally, but also externally have seen changes in this product with 500 million users.
"There are so many roles in an enterprise, how do you think about the balance of functional requirements of different roles?" This question was thrown endlessly at the discussion. In other words: any enterprise has a boss, There are management and ordinary employees. Who is DingTalk responsible for?
Many people think that DingTalk is prepared for bosses to facilitate management. This is the biggest stereotype of DingTalk from the outside world.
The answer from the DingTalk product team is so frank that I can’t help but quote it more:
First of all, if a company wants to install a set of OA or office software, the person who pays for it is the boss. , decisions are also made by the boss. It is undeniable that the boss is also the engine of corporate business and organizational development. When a product is still in its survival period, it must first make people who pay for it willing to use it, and only then can it have the so-called experience reputation. Early product developers of DingTalk must respect the status quo. DingTalk is a tool and cannot independently undertake the mission of changing the corporate management style.
Secondly, DingTalk has made many changes in respecting employees and achieving separation of work and life. For example, many people criticized the "DING" function. When it was first released in 2014, the "DING" function was very powerful. It would make three consecutive calls to the other party, and it still used a private number; the current "DING" function is much gentler. The vast majority of people use in-app and text messages. If you use it too much, you will receive a friendly reminder, suggesting that you have DING too many times and use it less.
“And I would like to defend DingTalk. The DING function is currently used most often when employees DING their supervisors. Generally, when they encounter urgent matters that require approval or decision-making, they will DING their bosses, but the bosses are very There are so many subordinates,” said an Alibaba employee.
Another example: Recently, DingTalk added a "scheduled sharing" option to the "Notes" function, allowing company members to set the information they read and memos they wrote on their holidays to working days. Post to colleagues. "You need to have a weekend attitude on weekends. If you have anything to do, let's talk about it next Monday." This is a respect for the principle of "separation of work and life".
This year, the CEO of Kuaikan Comics publicly complained in WeChat Moments, saying that DingTalk’s OK gesture looked “arrogant and condescending”. As a boss, he felt embarrassed and strongly suggested that product managers change it.
After many turns, this circle of friends was transferred to DingTalk. DingTalk silently accepted the suggestion, specifically compared the gestures in the real world, and adjusted the OK expression in a direction that is cute and affectionate.
The before and after process of modifying DingTalk’s OK emoticon
The before and after comparison of DingTalk’s OK emoticon
In the past two years, DingTalk has launched many new features and improvements. In fact, they are all improving the company's work efficiency per unit time, thereby reducing the burden on employees. For example, the "Ding Flash Meeting" launched in October 2021 is a one-click corporate meeting toolbox that integrates documents, schedules, video conferencing, to-do, group and other tools into the meeting interface, and also has instant shorthand and sharing Function. Those small businesses with seven or eight employees should be the most welcoming of “Talk Flash Meetings” because it does solve most of the pain points of meetings at a very low cost.
DingTalk Flash Meeting, a corporate meeting toolbox launched by DingTalk not long ago
In fact, I think large companies should also welcome this kind of meeting toolbox. I have worked at a securities firm for ten years, and held various internal meetings every month and every week. By Friday, I could not remember what was discussed in Monday’s meeting. Meetings hosted by department leaders should at least It takes three small meetings at the group level to figure out exactly what to do. If there had been "pin flash meetings" at that time, I should have been able to save more than ten hours every week and use them to do more meaningful things-playing games or sleeping.
Quick +1, paddling with peace of mind
DingTalk is learning how to make more ordinary people "experience better", not just taking care of bosses and management. For example, by developing the HR and financial modules to be more practical and efficient, the experience of HR and financial personnel will be improved; the functions of the DingTalk reimbursement system will be enhanced and connected with the digital work badge to achieve full automation of travel reimbursement without the need for a single transaction. When every invoice is posted, the experience of all employees is improved.
Last month, DingTalk announced the establishment of an audio and video division, and set up the "DingTalk Hummingbird Audio Laboratory" in the division, led by acoustics expert Feng Jinwei. It goes without saying that DingTalk’s future design ideas should be more “designed for employees who are not present and designed for asynchronous design.”
In order to improve the product experience of hybrid office, DingTalk has also piloted working from home for one day per month for some teams since November. The original intention is to allow employees to experience DingTalk flash meetings, audio and video and other products, so that employees can Give feedback on your own products.
02. DingTalk is going to get serious about its products
Talking about the future of DingTalk as a product, Buqiu made an interesting statement:
Also That is to say, "making good products" will be regarded as the underlying driving force of DingTalk's growth flywheel. DingTalk is going to take serious action on its products.
According to the team leader, Alibaba will also internally evaluate the NPS level of all products. DingTalk counts the top-ranked products, but some functions are still unsatisfactory and need to be improved.
Some people may ask: Isn’t “product-driven” the growth model of To C business? DingTalk is a typical To B product. Does it also need to consider recommending word-of-mouth and take a product-driven route? In fact, this is also a stereotype formed in a specific historical period - in the past many years, my country's ToB professional service market was not developed enough, with few types of services and low prices, and it mainly relied on the ability of sales to place orders. However, as the ToB market develops and matures, "product-driven" will become an important development path for ToB products. Products that are self-operated and self-propagated will grow faster; products that do not follow this path will be difficult to grow.
The needs of ToB users are much more complex than those of ToC users. Without in-depth user research, it’s difficult to figure out where your users’ pain points are. Every industry has its own know-how. You must first understand the business processes of enterprise users before you can transform these business processes. Moreover, ToB products are filled with a large number of low-frequency functions, which are very important and cannot be cut off. How to guide users to use complex low-frequency functions is a great test for product managers.
Therefore, when someone asks “What exactly is DingTalk’s moat?”, the DingTalk product team will answer without hesitation: “First of all, it is the understanding and accumulation of users and customers over the years; This is the first-mover advantage we want to maintain."
This is also the biggest difference between To B products and To C products - To C products can be carried high and hit high, and single-point blasting can also be invincible and win the overall situation with one move; To B products must be steady and steady. We have to get stuck in the mud and our hands are calloused, so we cannot blindly expect to achieve success in one battle. The past ten years have been the golden age of To C products, but if you do To B with To C thinking, you may suffer big losses.
The DingTalk product team has realized that only by serving every employee of the company well can we serve users well.
DingTalk is one of the most employee-friendly features of DingTalk
Of course, no matter how strong DingTalk’s understanding of the enterprise is, it cannot be satisfied by itself. All their needs; it is important to introduce third-party applications. Therefore, the DingTalk product team believes that its second moat is "openness" - opening more than 2,000 interfaces to third parties, opening up multiple functions and industry capabilities with core competitiveness, and building a low-code aggregation platform DingTalk . If DingTalk can transform from an enterprise collaboration software into an open digital productivity platform, then it can completely solve various pain points in business operations and achieve mutual success.
Conclusion
This internal product complaint from Alibaba will give me two thoughts: First, DingTalk is very humble now and is willing to listen to all kinds of opinions, even some that are completely unreasonable. Complain mercilessly; it admits its shortcomings and has the courage to improve them. The second is that DingTalk is changing, shifting to comprehensive product-driven growth (PLG), taking a more comprehensive view of the needs of enterprise users, and at the same time seeking to achieve win-win results with enterprise users and ecological partners. Having such a correct attitude is the basis for making good products.
In any case, I sincerely hope that there will be several To B productivity tools in China that are efficient, comprehensive, and directly address the pain points of small and medium-sized enterprises. Over the past many years, while observing the industry as an analyst, my biggest experience is that the digitalization level of China's traditional industries, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, is too low, and there is too much room for improvement. Many companies want to improve efficiency through digitalization, but they don’t know how to improve it. They can only struggle at the low end of the industry chain year after year.
If large Internet companies can help them get out of the quagmire and move towards the high end of the industrial chain, it will undoubtedly complete a major social task, which will bring huge externalities and bring changes to traditional industries. The longed-for new vitality.
I hope DingTalk can make a greater contribution to this task.