BEIJING/HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Within the cramped former dwelling of Jack Ma, founding father of the Chinese language e-commerce large Alibaba, about thirty younger engineers sit elbow-to-elbow, working to draw the following million customers for DingTalk, Alibaba’s office communication software program.
Their set up within the hallowed flat the place Ma obtained his begin within the jap metropolis of Hangzhou displays DingTalk’s place within the pecking order of the corporate’s sprawling assortment of start-up initiatives.
Since December 2014, DingTalk has grown exponentially to develop into the world’s largest chat service designed for firms, with over 100 million particular person customers and seven million employers throughout China. The corporate says, with out offering numbers, that it additionally has a rising presence in Europe, america and Southeast Asia.
However its speedy rise – propelled by a promise to spice up productiveness by way of higher monitoring of worker actions and quicker responses to essential messages – has sparked a backlash from Chinese language staff who say the app fuels an unhealthy work tradition.
That additionally raises questions on DingTalk’s potential to increase into the West, the place individuals are usually guarded about their office privateness. In China, surveillance by the authorities and employers is already frequent.
Like WhatsApp, DingTalk lets senders see if recipients have learn messages, but it surely additionally has a “ding” function that may bombard recipients with repeat notifications, textual content messages and phone-call reminders.
On high of this authentic function, the corporate has added a variety of features that embody automated expense claims, a clock-in system to observe the whereabouts of workers, in addition to a “every day report” operate that requires staff to checklist accomplished duties.
As DingTalk has grown, many Chinese language workplace staff have vented their frustrations on-line concerning the service, saying it’s inhumane and destroys belief.
On Zhihu.com, a question-and-answer web site, a thread entitled “how does it really feel prefer to be pressured to make use of DingTalk at work” has greater than a thousand posts and has been seen over 7.7 million instances.
A casual Reuters ballot of 30 staff utilizing DingTalk confirmed that about half had adverse emotions concerning the app, whereas the remaining stated they have been high-quality with it – actually because their firms had not adopted options such because the clock-in operate.
“There’s a saying in my circle, that it is best to stop the day your organization installs DingTalk,” stated Robert, who works in luxurious retail within the northwestern province of Shaanxi and complains that DingTalk has “fragmented his time into items”. He declined to supply his surname.
Li Xiaoyang, a former software program gross sales agent in Beijing, stated he had to make use of DingTalk’s geo-location operate at his earlier agency at any time when he met a shopper, and use a face scanner to confirm he was attending conferences.
“I felt so disgusted by it,” he stated, including that he was consistently dinged by managers.
“Each stage of administration thinks their demand is the highest precedence and needs to be handled first,” he stated. “Even worse, they are going to ding you thru DingTalk even on vacation and you may’t fake you didn’t see it.”
WECHAT RIVAL
DingTalk sprang from Alibaba’s unsuccessful try to problem the WeChat immediate messenger of its arch-rival, Tencent Holdings Ltd, the service’s chief govt, Wu Zhao, stated in an interview.
“We got here to grasp that we didn’t perceive social media platforms,” Wu stated at DingTalk’s places of work in Hangzhou, the place Alibaba has its headquarters.
As a substitute, Wu’s staff sought one other area of interest, tackling a typical managerial criticism in China: staff who fail to answer to messages and later feign ignorance.
The driving pressure behind DingTalk’s development has been fixing the organizational considerations of Chinese language companies and offering – totally free – a platform that offers firms a stage of effectivity much like Alibaba’s, Wu stated.
“What Jack Ma stated to me was: ‘Wu Zhao, serving to small and medium enterprises is our firm’s mission. You go try this; don’t concern your self with being profitable’,” he stated.
Requested about DingTalk’s enterprise mannequin, Wu stated the corporate was specializing in serving to firms develop into clear and environment friendly, slightly than making a revenue.
The app’s primary options are all free, however customers must pay for and extra cloud storage or convention name minutes, in addition to for third occasion companies.
Alibaba doesn’t specify DingTalk’s income in its monetary statements.
Wu is conscious of the backlash DingTalk is dealing with, however says the issue is a “poisonous work tradition at some firms” and misuse by some employers.
“The software itself just isn’t the issue; the way in which it’s used is the issue,” he stated.
FRUSTRATIONS
Data from the app have been utilized by firms as proof to fireplace workers and dock pay, in response to labor-related lawsuits seen by Reuters in court docket filings.
However DingTalk additionally wins reward as a productiveness assist.
“It saves plenty of time as you now not want to sit down in bodily convention calls and make telephone calls. For essential issues, you simply have to ding somebody,” stated Liu Sufen, a spokeswoman on the Chinese language bicycle-sharing agency Hellobike.
For bigger firms, like Dongguan Meishang Clothes, which has a nation-wide shopper base and greater than three,000 workers, DingTalk has helped cut back prices and improve effectivity, stated Peng Xiang, the corporate’s info director.
“Earlier than we used DingTalk, it was almost not possible for workers to speak immediately with the boss; nonetheless with DingTalk this turns into attainable and straightforward.”
Peng stated approval processes that after took per week may now be achieved in an hour on DingTalk.
Regardless of the grumbling, Wu believes the service will translate throughout borders and cultures – even within the West.
“In the event you come into Starbucks within the morning and you’re informed you possibly can’t purchase espresso as a result of their employees hasn’t arrived, will you settle for that? Even the Europeans received’t settle for tardiness.”
Nonetheless, Chen Bikui, a accomplice at Liuhe Ventures who invests in enterprise software program startups, stated he doubted that DingTalk would succeed overseas, citing points like privateness considerations within the West.
“DingTalk is a lot tailor-made to Chinese language firms – it will be arduous for it to be adopted by firms from different nations,” he stated.
Reporting by Yawen Chen in BEIJING and Christian Shepherd in HANGZHOU; Extra Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Elias Glenn; Modifying by Tony Munroe and Philip McClellan