#Hi, stranger! - social tools

Have you ever tried to meet a random stranger on street? What's the first pick up line? Did he/she still talk to you after the first meet?

In multi-level marketing (mlm), its all about building trust and network. Meeting strangers is very important skillset for their recruitment process as they will eventually use up their original network. In this project, I am asked to design several health-related ice breaking solution for them to meet strangers. 

This is a case study about designing tools for junior distributors to gain trust from strangers while learning to be a subject matter expert (SME) in traditional chinese medicine (TCM).

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Background.

Infinitus - No.1 direct selling company in China
Recorded 213 billion sales in 2017. Focusing on Chinese herbal supplement.

MLM is a a human to human business, making new friends is essential for distributor to be successful and become a team leader. 

In the beginning of the business, junior distributors will be taught to list out all his potential customer from his family members, friends and colleagues. They will probably used up the list after 6 months. It's time for them to reach out new leads. 

Making new friends is not about just saying 'Hi!' to a random strangers. It's about building trust towards the person, the product and the company. Without certain techniques and tools, it is way too difficult especially most people have negative perception towards MLM.

I was the lead UX/UI designer for several health-related ice breaking digital tools assisting distributors to expand their network more efficiently. 

 
 

What am I asked to do.

  • help junior distributors to gather a group of potential customer at ease

  • help junior distributors to build trust and make friends with strangers at ease

  • The method should be catered both for online and offline usage

 

What do I FIRST inherit.

Instead of helping them hunting down random strangers, those tools should help developing the junior distributor become more trustworthy as a TCM professional. 

Before they become trustworthy, the distributors can also leverage from external source like TCM partitioner and social media feeds to build relationship with their potential customer.

 

Research.

I need to understand how distributors to find new leads, their successful case and fail case. 

  • Conduct interviews with the distributors in Hong Kong, knowing what kind of tool or method they are using?

  • looking at the usage figures and their comments from the existing tools

I need to know about the latest technology on TCM spectrum and their technical boundary 

  • Gather information from internal innovation lab

  • Gather information from local universities

 

Research outcomes.

  • Distributors will look for their potential customer in their neighbourhood by joining different activities like tour, volunteer work, singing class...etc

  • Distributors seldom use the existing tools as they find the content and the language is irrelevant and it takes too long for the potential customer to use it. (health assessment questionnaire tools with 55 questions, 360 factory tour)

  • Distributors used to bring the potential customer to meet a TCM partitioner in office for diagnosis.

  • Distributors will have 10+ social media(WeChat) posts everyday on their living style and TCM knowledge.

  • TCM doctor needs to “Look, Listen (and Smell), Ask and Feel (望闻问切 Wang Wen Wen Qie).” We have explored the look and feel parts in digital way from universities around the world.

  • We successfully get the patent and usage from a US university for tongue analysis. For the pulse sensing, the technology from City University is not ready for commercial purpose.

 

How might we.

Create…
A tool showing professional proof 

For…
Junior Distributors 

To…
build trust to their potential customer
and enrich their own TCM knowledge

And improve…
distributors' trustworthiness and recruitment rate

 
 

Design.

tongue analysis
brandbuilder
digital TCM partitioner

 

Impact / hindsight.

User satisfaction rate increase from 60 to 80
90% of user switch to the new platform (parellel with the old system)
inbox respond rate 75%