Nine Ways To Do Business With Wechat Official Accounts (Part I)

Tencent held its annual Partner Conference today. WeChat invited some public account operators to share their experiences.

1.   Guangzhou Public Security Bureau (GPSB)

GPSB launched a WeChat official account in November last year, becoming the first governmental authority to launch a WeChat-based service. Aiming to provide convenience to citizens, the service features several of categories of information covering service guide, service program and road conditions, said Zhang Shengcun, deputy director of GPSB’s public relations department. The working efficiency of the bureau has been promoted ever since, he added.

GPSB is exploring new functions for sending confirmation of traffic law violations, fine payments, exit/entry registration and namesake check.

2.    China Southern Airline (CSA)

The subscribers of CSA’s WeChat platform amounted to 400,000 since its launch on January 30 this year. As a service provider, CSA aims to capitalize on the popularity of WeChat which has become a major means of communication between people. CSA WeChat account features functions of voice weather forecast, interactive mileage check and membership display. In addition, WeChat has played a great role in staff allocation. “WeChat platform is a service, aiming to provide accurate positioning and convenience to our clients”, said Long Geng chief technology officer of the company.

3.    Chumen Wenwen

Chumen Wenwen is a Siri-like mobile voice search engine that focused on life services. Chumen Wenwen offers a spate of functions which make your life easier, ranging from ticket booking and hotel reservation to restaurant coupon printing and weather forecast. Li Zhifei, founder of the company, said that Chumen Wenwen pursues high-quality and natural voice searching experiences. Its customers amounted to around 100,000 with a monthly active rate of 40 percent. Li added that WeChat boasts three competitive edges over its rivals, including natural voice input which is familiar to clients, characteristics of searching products and customized searching experience.

4. Economy Hotel Manager

Huang Kun, vice president of hotel reservation app Economy Hotel Manager, compared WeChat messages to cards that carry information, commodity and services data, while WeChat public platform is a place where these “cards” can be relayed. Economy Hotel Manager enables customers to find hotel via location-based services and reserve hotels on webpages (enabled by HTML5) opened within WeChat . It can send you the latest information of your flight or even little jokes to kill time while you are waiting. In addition, WeChat public account is less Internet traffic-demanding than a standalone app, while providing the same service.

For Part 2, please visit here.