Geek Repair CEO Wu Wei: This book of mobile phone repairs is better than model innovation.

If you have been paying attention to the technology industry for a long time, I believe you will not be unfamiliar with the word "innovation". In fact, it is not just China, but innovation is a popular hot word around the world for a long time. Looking back on the past and based on the present, if we want to outline a map of the innovative models of major countries around the world, I believe many people will agree with the following "painting method"

Germany, a manufacturing powerhouse, mainly relies on technological innovation, and a craftsman spirit has made its machines popular all over the world; the United States, mainly relies on technological innovation. Although the United States has also created many business model innovations, the core driving force is still technology; Japan, serving a powerhouse, mainly relies on service innovation. Although its technological microinnovation is also remarkable, "perverted" services are its first label.

So what innovation does China rely on? Four simple words: business model. Chinese entrepreneurs' preference for business model innovation has almost reached an obsession. Not only has many international terms such as cloud computing and big data "grown new buds" in China, but they also continue to contribute new words to the world, such as O20, Internet+, Internet celebrity economy, etc.

What we want to share today is a matter related to O2O entrepreneurship; specifically, it is a matter of the sub-sector of home-to-door mobile phone repair in China's huge O2O business model entrepreneurship torrent. The protagonist of the sharing is Mr. Wu Wei, CEO of the home-based mobile phone repair platform "Geek Repair", a low-key Internet cultivator.

Geek Repair CEO Wu Wei

Why did "Geek Network" choose Geek Repair, a mobile phone repair O2O platform to share? Of course it is not because of the similar names, but as an O2O startup company, Geek Shui has a different understanding of O2O, a different development path, a different current situation, and a different future concept - it is a startup company that "watches service innovation better than business model innovation" that "looks on the trend" and can be called the "a little red in the green" of the O2O entrepreneurship tide, which is worth exploring.

At the forefront, but in the evening market, why choose to start a business with O2O mobile phone repair?

The word O2O has entered people's vision since the end of 2013, and has become popular since March 2014. Then, it seems that overnight, the Chinese Internet entrepreneurship market, which is under the suppression of BAT's high monopoly, ushered in a great time like a clearing cloud. 2014 was therefore called the first year of O2O by the industry, and a large number of startups emerged like mushrooms after a rain that year. Geek Review was officially launched in January 2015. For the O2O industry, this is already late. Although it is backed by China's IT consumption portal and China's well-known IT digital media group Tianji Media, it has uniquely advanced IT Internet information, professional digital product library and knowledge database and other valuable resources.

Later on, they may not necessarily come to the fore, but later on are often able to see the problem better. Wu Wei told Geek.com that Geek Repair’s project was launched earlier, but until it was launched, the team was thinking about three questions: 1. What pain points should Geek Repair solve in the industry? 2. Does this market really exist? 3. What model should you choose to cultivate the market? A bit similar to the famous ultimate philosophical question: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

Like almost everyone who has been "bited by a snake", Wu Wei bluntly stated that he has also stepped on many "black repairs" pits in life, and his personal emotions are naturally brought to his entrepreneurial sentiment. Inefficient efficiency, opaque prices, poor accessories quality, unsupported maintenance quality, uneven quality of maintenance personnel... With these industry pain points, Geek repair has embarked on the road to provide door-to-door mobile phone repair services. In Geek Repair, users can easily contact Geek Repair Engineer to repair their mobile phones through WeChat, web orders, and call customer service phones. "Compared with official service stores, geek repairs are faster and cheaper; compared with traditional individual repair stores, geek repairs are more professional and transparent," said Wu Wei.

However, although traditional industries have pain points, is the market behind the new method of mobile phone repair O2O real? It won't just look beautiful but it's hard to land, right? ! On this point, Wu Wei firmly believes that the O2O model that can improve efficiency, save user time, and make users more free will definitely be implemented and taken off in the mobile phone repair industry, and traditional maintenance methods will definitely accelerate the transition to door-to-door maintenance methods. According to statistics from research institutions, the average revision rate of domestic mobile phones is generally around 10%, while international brands are 3-5%. If the intermediate value is calculated at 7%, and the number of mobile phone shipments in China disclosed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was 518 million units in 2015, then at least 36 million mobile phones will need repair in a year; based on the unit price of each repair, it is a market of nearly 15 billion yuan. If mobile phone recycling, trade-in and software update services are added, the market size will reach more than 30 billion yuan. If Wu Wei's judgment on the trend of traditional maintenance being transferred to home maintenance is valid, you can imagine how huge the market this is.

The "cake" is there, how to cut it? Geek Xiu made a completely different choice from most O2O startups on this issue. He changed the lightweight approach of "building a platform and being an intermediary" and turned to the so-called "asset-heavy" model - not only did he develop and build a system by himself, but he also recruited and trained maintenance engineers by himself, operated heavily throughout the process, and successively distributed coverage nationwide. Is this choice good or bad for geek repairs?

Don’t talk about the trend and services, and achieve the top 3 industry in "silent"

After searching through Geek Xiu's official website and encyclopedia introduction, you will find that there is no O2O or O2O related word. Wu Wei told Geek.com, "I think the most important thing in considering the direction of entrepreneurship is not the trend or concept, but whether the business model itself can bring clear value to users." Indeed, for ordinary users, they do not need to know what O2O and what Internet+ are. All they want is better services and better experience.

Therefore, compared to O2O companies, Wu Wei does not seem to deliberately pursue this east wind, and is more willing to be called and positioned as a "service provider". As a service provider, heavy asset layout seems very necessary. Wu Wei admitted that the mission of geek repair is to break the chaos in the mobile phone repair market, so we must establish a maintenance system and service product that is different from the "traditional black shop". "If you just build a platform like Didi and Uber, connecting users and service providers. Apart from improving efficiency, it has not changed the service level of "traditional black stores". The value is very limited."

In fact, Geek.com learned that Geek Repair now does not adopt a 100% self-built model, but adopts a model of own engineers + partners, among which the proportion of own engineers will be ensured not less than 80%. In response, Wu Wei explained, "Cooperatives are also an important strategic layout for us and play an important role in improving market coverage. In the management of cooperatives, Geek Repair has adopted standards consistent with its own repair stations, set up strict access and elimination mechanisms, and must ensure service quality." In any case, from an industry perspective, Geek Repair is still a vertically integrated heavy-mode service provider that "goes against the trend". But even with the burden, Geek Xiu still delivered a brilliant report card in less than two years since its establishment.

"Geek repair service has grown to 35 cities across the country, with more than 200 maintenance engineers. As of now, more than 210,000 mobile phones have been repaired, and the latest monthly orders exceeds 32,000 orders..." Wu Wei told Geek.com, "According to various data indicators, Geek repair has become the top 3 door-to-door mobile phone repair service provider in the country. The most important thing is that although Geek repair spends money on self-built team to operate heavily, we have not spent money on marketing and robbed users. We have achieved profitability in many cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen."

If the word profit was placed on the craziest days of O2O investment and financing in 2014 and the first half of 2015, it would probably be a "vulgar thing" that is not worth mentioning among O2O entrepreneurs and investors. However, time has changed and the situation has changed suddenly. After the O2O bubble burst in the second half of 2015, can it be profitable? Can cash flow be generated? These problems have become problems, and venture capitalists have taken a sharp turn of 180 degrees!

"When doing things in the stupidest way, you will gain the smartest users."

However, compared with the above performance, what Wu Wei is more proud and talks about is other data, such as the user service satisfaction of up to 95%, which is far ahead of his competitors. How is 95% calculated? Wu Wei told Geek.com, "We have a dedicated person responsible for monitoring customer satisfaction. The highest customer evaluation score is 5 points, and the average monthly passing score we require for engineers is 4.95 points, which means that more than 95% of the evaluations must reach a full score of 5 points to achieve a pass." For example, the "5-minute response" principle like the Soul-Chasing Call, that is, the geek repair customer service must respond within 5 minutes after the user places an order. Consumers who have visited Taobao stores know that 95% positive review rate, or 4.95 stars, is such a difficult number to complete. What does the waiter's reaction speed on Taobao or Alibaba Want-Wang mean for transactions and experiences?

For the service industry, customer satisfaction, or user reputation, is the survival of service providers. Wu Wei positioned Geek Repair as a service provider, no wonder he was so particular about it. He told Geek.com that behind these numbers is the geek repair team that uses the "stupidest" method to do dirty work and tiring work little by little, not just talk about it with red mouths and white teeth. Overall, in order to achieve the ultimate reputation of users, Geek Repair has made great efforts in three aspects: first, focus on the management and training of engineers, second, special personnel strictly control customer satisfaction, and third, strictly select original quality accessories to eliminate quality problems from the source and reduce re-repair.

In the management and training of engineers who are the first to bear the brunt of the brunt, Geek Cultivation pursues strict control and evaluation throughout the cycle and throughout the process. Wu Wei said that from receiving orders to dispatching orders to providing engineers’ door-to-door service, Geek Repair has a rigorous customer service process and engineer evaluation system. First, you must respond quickly and make an appointment to the door; second, you must have a unified image and decent behavior when you come to the door; third, you must record the entire process of video and operate transparently during the maintenance process. At the same time, in order to make engineers' work more standardized and proficient in skills, Geek School has specially developed distance education and examination systems, and has tirelessly cultivated their service awareness, service etiquette and service skills in the form of a "question bank". Wu Wei emphasized, "In most cases, the technical threshold for mobile phone repair is not high. Engineers often lack technology, but service attitude and service awareness. We hope to cultivate engineers' learning ability through continuous repeated assessments and adopt the method of end-of-time elimination, so that they can become qualified service personnel." In addition, Geek Shop has established the industry's only "geek Shop Academy" to train engineers in a comprehensive range of service attitudes, service processes and service skills. It is reported that the college has opened three batches of classes and has sent a large number of excellent young engineers to various places, including "young young meat" with excellent qualities and skills.

In terms of strictly controlling customer satisfaction, Wu Wei introduced that Geek Repair customer service will follow up on every order with low rating or no rating, understand what the customer is really dissatisfied with, and then follow up and solve it, and prompt the corresponding engineers to make insufficient improvements. Regarding customer complaints, Geek Xiu adopts a accountability system, and the regional director is responsible for it. For satisfactory customers, they will also take samples and follow-up visits to understand why the customers are satisfied and what suggestions can be provided. You can also get a telephone follow-up visit when repairing a mobile phone. This "extreme" service by Geek repair further gained user reputation and stimulated the self-producing ability of word-of-mouth marketing.

In terms of the selection of repair accessories, Wu Wei said that although the accessories for Android phones are difficult to make, Geek Repair still insists on using original quality accessories, and never uses high-quality products or products produced by second-rate manufacturers. To a famous extent, it avoids mobile phone repairs caused by accessories quality problems.

"These investments will increase costs to a certain extent, but they are crucial to building a good reputation for users. As a service company, 'reputation of users' is the center of everything we do." Wu Wei added, "We don't need a one-time user to get, we need loyal users brought by user reputation. Or simply, we need loyal users, but smart users. Smart users can always distinguish right from wrong, authenticity, and get the value of truly good service!"

"Small goals" and "big vision", home maintenance will generate billions of platforms

Although he graduated from the Shenzhen Graduate School of Tsinghua University, worked in well-known companies such as Founder Technology, Tsinghua Tongfang, and Tianji Media, and also personally founded or participated in the establishment of several companies in the fields of Internet technology and e-commerce (of which he participated in the co-founding of Wu Hundred City 3C Electric Appliance Network in 2011, and received 30 million investments from Xue Manzi and Tencent ), the name Wu Wei still seems to be extremely low-key in the high-profile O2O industry. This conversation with Geek.com is the first time he has spoken out in the field of home maintenance for a long time. Talking about future ideas, he has been working hard for more than ten years and is still energetic every day until two o'clock in the morning. He can't hide his excitement and share his "small goals" and "big vision": the repair service in the Internet form is long-tail. In the future, in addition to doing a good job in mobile phone repair, mobile phone recycling, and old-for-new, we will also launch home-based repairs for our IT, digital and home appliances.

In his plan, it is only his small goal to do a good job in mobile phone repair. Geek repair must create a good service experience and establish industry standards through it. Then, with similar service experience and standard models, it expands on-site repair to a larger IT, digital and home appliance repair industry, and ultimately form a large Internet+ service platform centered on mobile phone repair and comprehensively covers IT, digital and home appliance repair industries. Regarding the value of this big vision, Wu Wei predicted, "My judgment is that in the next two or three years, there will definitely be a home-based repair service company in China that is hundreds of millions or even billions."

"In this big platform, mobile phones are the most important because they are the core equipment of individuals and home intelligence. In the future, personal peripheral electronic equipment, as well as all electrical equipment in the home, will connect and interact with the mobile phone." Based on this, Wu Wei revealed, "After doing a good job in mobile phone repair, Geek Repair will adopt a Uber-like platform model in IT, digital and home appliance repairs, 'copy' the high standards and service experience of mobile phone home repairs, and strive to transform and upgrade more backward traditional service industries at a faster speed."

"Like mobile phones, many pain points in the IT, digital and home appliance repair industry also need to be solved." Wu Wei firmly believes that their turn to home maintenance is like domestic service, takeaway and other business behaviors that originally existed and verified in the non-Internet era. It is not that O2O promotes them to develop, but that they conform to people's consumption habits and the needs of Internet development. In essence, they are "supply-side reform" and service innovation spontaneously generated in response to consumption upgrades. Because of this, for enterprises that are working hard, the correct way to make efforts should be to continuously promote and improve service innovation.

It is true that technological innovation cannot be achieved overnight, and service innovation cannot be achieved overnight. But we believe that faith, dreams and a solid entrepreneurial mentality, like the hormones flowing in the bodies of the tech giants in Silicon Valley, are important reasons why Silicon Valley and even the United States can maintain their lasting and vigorous innovation. Similarly, Japan's globally renowned service experience is also the Japanese's decades of harsh adherence to faith, dreams and details.

Reflecting on China , the overall impetuousness, short-sightedness, and excessive obsession in business models and neglecting connotations of many startups in the past and current world have made us farther and farther away from real innovation and real progress. Should we learn something from the corporate spirit of the United States and Japan? The geek repair "going against the trend" has injected "a clear stream" into the O2O industry, and its future development deserves close attention.