What features appeared in the Chinese super-app and delivery services during the coronavirus
By: Heads
Tags: Coronavirus, Apps, Business Strategy, E Commerce Business, Ecommerce

In China, the coronavirus epidemic has subsided. Perhaps the pace decrease of new infections was partially helped by the decisions of the country’s technology companies. The Heads and Hands team found out what services and tools were effective during the Chinese epidemic.

Registration in public transport by QR code

Diagnostics by QR codes

WeChat introduced special QR codes to track people in public transport.

Bus, metro, or taxi passengers had to provide information about themselves through scanning a special QR code. So the system synchronizes their ID with the vehicle number, boarding time, and other information.

If subsequently a passenger from this vehicle was found to have a coronavirus infection, everyone who was nearby and could be infected received a warning push-notification about this.

Tencent (owners of WeChat) did not indicate whether they would inform the authorities about the infected, but the service received support from the government. The Travel Registration Codes already covers public transport and taxis in 13 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, with a total population of 83 million.

Alibaba Group has introduced a color-coded QR code system that tells people if they should quarantine.

The system assigns one of three QR codes to the user: red, yellow, or green. Only owners of the green code can freely move around the city. People with a yellow code should stay at home for a week. With red — go to a quarantine for 2 weeks.

The user can register in the system through the mini-app of the public services portal in Alipay.

When registering, a person enters his/her name, national identification number, phone number, fills out a questionnaire with questions about recent travels and well-being. The human health code is determined by three factors: travel history; the amount of time inside the infected areas; relationships with potential carriers of the virus.

The Chinese government has obliged mobile operators and other large data collectors to track the location of users up to the states in which they are located.

Not all residents of China were satisfied with the work of health codes. Some complained that the code arbitrarily changed color and that the mark of the application could not be disputed.

A similar function is performed by the Close Contact Detector application to determine the risk of infection. It is available for download when scanning a QR code through Alipay, WeChat, or QQ.

When registering, the user indicates the real name and ID number. Then receives response information about whether he/she had contact with the infected. If there was a risk, the user is advised to stay in quarantine at home.

Data for the application is provided by the State Committee on Hygiene and Health of the PRC, the Ministry of Transport, the Chinese Railways, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

IT companies are not limited to services that allow you to assess the risk of disease. You can consult a doctor inside the WeChat super-app as well as on the joint platform of Baidu and the Beijing Medical Association.

Delivery: contactless and robots

In China, about 400 million people use delivery services, which makes up about 30% of the population. The country employs more than 3 million suppliers. As the epidemic spread, the latter began to be considered as potential carriers of the virus. The couriers also began to fear for their health.

A story was spread on social networks about an infected courier who had no symptoms of the disease for 14 days, and all this time he went to work. Also, users were alarmed by the news that four restaurant employees in Chongqing were infected with the virus.

Delivery was ordered less often, some residential complexes and communities completely stopped letting strangers into their territories. Shares of Meituan Dianping, one of the country’s largest food and goods delivery services, fell by 13%. And companies began to look for a way out.

Dianping introduced the delivery service so that customers and delivery people do not contact them. The company also asked vendors to wear masks, to disinfect their carry-ons and began to measure their temperature daily.

For customer peace of mind, Dianping also began attaching cards to the food packages with the names of all employees who worked on the manufacture, packaging, and delivery of the order, indicating their temperature. The card also contains data on the disinfection measures taken by employees.

Another solution was delivery using robotics. In the same Meituan Dianping began to use autonomous vehicles, which in one trip can bring from 3 to 5 orders. The company noted that after the quarantine was completed and people returned to work, among their new users ⅔ were people from 40 years old. Before, the main audience of the application was twenty.

Source: Meituan

The Chinese e-commerce company JD.com, using autonomous vehicles, delivered not only food but also medicines to the hospital and local communities in Wuhan during the outbreak and blockade of the city.

Alibaba-owned Ele.me food delivery and delivery service used robots to deliver food to rooms in a quarantined hotel in Wenzhou in eastern China.

Companies not only tried to secure users and couriers but also supported institutions that had a hard time during the period of general isolation. Meituan, in cooperation with banks, provided loans to institutions that needed support, Ele.me reduced the commission for restaurants.

Remote work and education

When a new academic semester began in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, more than a million students were forced to stay at home. Solutions for distance learning and work have already been developed by the main large companies of the country, during the epidemic they made them more accessible.

Youku, a Chinese YouTube equivalent, has launched free online classes for elementary and high school students. To conduct the lessons, they began to work in conjunction with another service from the Alibaba Group — the corporate platform Dingtalk (resembles Slack).

By the way, the students took up arms against the Dingtalk application and began to mass-install units in the hope that it would disappear from the AppStore. They dropped the rating from 4.9 to 1.4, and the founder of the company was forced to ask the children to spare the service.

At the time of the epidemic, Dingtalk also opened free access to the homework platform and even opened filters that make it look better without makeup.

WeChat Work, an app from another leading Chinese company, has increased the maximum number of videoconferencing participants to 300 and has opened up for companies, schools and hospitals free access to telemedicine and online training.

Cinema, fitness, home shopping

After the fitness clubs were forced to close, trainers began to conduct classes in the Douyin application (Chinese version of TikTok).

Also, the platform has replaced going to the movies. ByteDance, the owner of the Douyin application, bought the rights to the film Lost in Russia, which was supposed to be released in the Chinese New Year — the hottest time for film distribution, and broadcast it on its sites.

The broadcast of another film that did not pass on screens due to the virus, Enter the Fat Dragon, took place on iQiyi and Tencent Video video platforms.

Real estate agencies also decided to fight for customers in every possible way. The largest Chinese online classified site 58.com and the Anjuke property search platform offered virtual tours and live broadcasts that would help potential buyers choose a property without a personal visit.

Chinese technology companies were able to quickly adapt to changing circumstances in their attempts to not only minimize their own damage, but also to protect others.