What are the technological innovations and system capabilities behind NIO Worry-Free Service?

This week, we will walk you through the NIO ATQ Exploration Journey — user service quality.

With the emergence of more user scenarios, the smart EV users' expectations for service quality have risen. The quality management of NIO user service is beyond the scope of traditional automotive aftersales services, encompassing touchpoints in products, services, and the community from vehicle delivery to the very end of a car’s lifecycle. To this end, NIO has established a quality assurance system for the entire process and all scenarios of user services, including aftersales problem resolution, user service operations, user relationship management, and aftersales car maintenance and repair, with the aim of addressing users’ pain points promptly and providing “experiences beyond expectations” at every touchpoint.

Here are a handful of real cases about NIO’s user service quality.

We Value User Feedback and Solve Issues One-Stop

User feedback and satisfaction are of paramount importance to us. Therefore, we have developed a system capable of collecting user feedback comprehensively and circulating issues internally, thereby supporting the company-wide closed-loop management mechanism. This mechanism ensures that user experience throughout the entire lifecycle is followed, and user voices are captured from different channels. These voices are conveyed without delay to the functional departments in charge of quality management, product experience, product development, power management, user operations, service operations, and roadside service, who are responsible for identifying the root causes of the issues and providing corresponding solutions.

Multiple channels are open to NIO users for real-time feedback, including NOMI, the exclusive service group, user service hotline, and NIO app. Users review tools such as the five-star rating and satisfaction survey are available too to gather opinions and suggestions on service quality. What’s more, user feedback serves as a pivotal lever for enhancements in product experience and service quality. In 2023, a large amount of user feedback and suggestions were collected, with both the timely project initiation rate and on-time closed-loop rate exceeding 95%.

With advanced technologies concerning changes in user sentiments, insights into authentic user voice, and digital intelligence, NIO constantly improves its problem-solving capabilities, responding to issues within just a few seconds. Touchpoints are meticulously designed for various user scenarios to ensure that experiences are always reassuring. Worry-Free Service Packages are offered when users require services such as maintenance and repair. At the same time, NIO constantly holds internal recap sessions, accumulates experience, and monitors service processes and results, so as to create better products and experiences for users.

Response Within Seconds for Care Without Latency

NIO pioneers the world's first in-vehicle instant feedback system with which users just need to say "Hi NOMI, I want to give feedback" and the voice and the vehicle's relevant data will be passed to the support departments with zero delay. After that, a task of issue analysis and problem solving is created with the first response to users within an average of 24 hours, and the final resolution provided within 48 hours, a significant improvement compared with the average one-week response time for aftersales problems in the automotive industry.

Our management mechanism ensures quick project initiation targeting issues, rapid implementation of necessary Interim Containment Actions (ICA), and quick realization of Permanent Corrective Actions (PCA). Behind the immediate response is a powerful set of digital and intelligent technologies for the closed-loop of aftersales issues, which is also the first AI technology system applied in the automotive industry centering around quality. This set of technology system not only composes Quality Knowledge Graph System (Q-Graph), a quality data service, but also features a high-performance quality large language model Q-GPT, which is trained by instructions based on the in-house data, for various quality tasks and scenarios, improving the speed of problem solving by 30%.

All-Scenario Touchpoint Management

As a "user enterprise", NIO has a deep and comprehensive understanding of user relationship management. From user interaction to community operations and space experiences, we have touchpoint management covering all scenarios. To connect better with users, we also set up service coordination teams as the bridge which connects the two sides.

With the goal of "addressing users' needs, both the expected and the unexpected", we take every single user interaction, such as a phone call or a message seriously. For example, if a user needs recommendations for trips, he or she can ask for tips on food, accommodation, attractions and routes in the exclusive service group. The service butler will, based on all sources of reviews such as personal knowledge of the destination and information gathered from friends and various platforms, provide users with detailed tips and have real-time interactions with users in the service group.

As for the accident rescue during Spring Festival or under extreme weather, we will perform rescue operations instantly with comprehensive services and management for people, vehicles and goods. Backend colleagues will help the user and ensure the trip is continued, prioritizing the safety of the user while safeguarding the journey home. Roadside service specialists will stay on duty to properly arrange the towing and repair of the accident vehicle. And the items inside the car will be properly arranged for mailing or shipping after the discussion with the user.

From service hotline to exclusive service group, our service is everywhere. We have real people providing 24/7 online customer support for more accurate and efficient communication. In case of emergencies, the front-line colleagues will respond in 5 seconds on average after the SOS button is pressed in the car. For major accidents, we will arrange a valet on duty to ensure that the people and the car leave the scene safely.

End-to-End Maintenance Quality Management: How to Fix Cars Well and Fast?

In the era of smart EVs, vehicles are upgraded more frequently, complicating maintenance processes and posing higher requirements for maintenance quality, which is not only related to safety, but also affects vehicle experiences.

NIO has deployed more than 300 NIO Service Centers in nearly 200 cities in China, providing one-stop aftersales services for over 600,000 users. However, repairing a car is like treating an illness, there are slight illnesses and complicated diseases. Keeping the consistency and standardization of maintenance quality across China so that users can have their cars fixed in a timely manner at any service center is not an easy thing.

In light of that, we have built an end-to-end maintenance quality system starting from users’ repair and maintenance needs and ending with user satisfaction. From the standard design to cross-regional resource allocation, we ensure that the closed-loop system is measurable and manageable. In addition, we have included maintenance quality into NIO’s company-level satisfaction management system for the continuous improvement of efficiency and quality.

Based on the end-to-end maintenance quality management system, we further extend maintenance quality to product development. Starting from the vehicle architecture design, we evaluate the convenience, cost and diagnosability for maintenance and optimize the maintainability in the product design phase. For key maintenance scenarios, we have designed 360-degree video demonstrations so that technicians across China and around the world can quickly learn the maintenance techniques of the latest NIO models. We have also abandoned the paper maintenance card, which is common in the aftersales workshops of traditional OEMs, and developed NIO’s exclusive Maintenance Quality Management Dashboard, digitalizing maintenance quality standards, breaking down key techniques, and focusing on complete maintenance processes. The dashboard makes the whole maintenance process traceable and facilitates standardization and lean optimizations.

In 2024, NIO was ranked at the top of studies on New Energy Vehicle User Experience Value in China with its outstanding performance. NIO Service not only solves users’ problems, but also is committed to making NIO a user enterprise where innovative technology meets experience excellence. For NIO, users are not merely consumers, but family members.

For NIOers, the pursuit of quality never stops. We will insist on putting user perspectives, scenarios and interests first and paying attention to full-lifecycle quality.