New changes to WeChat: If you do not renew your account, your customer management functions will be limited

The latest rule adjustment of WeChat for Business has had a significant impact on private domain traffic management. According to the new changes, companies that have not renewed their subscriptions will face restrictions on customer management functions and will not be able to perform basic operations such as one-to-one or group messaging and managing WeChat groups.

WeChat for Work recently completed a rule adjustment. According to the new changes, companies that have not renewed their subscriptions will not be able to use basic functions such as WeChat for Work one-to-one and group messaging, WeChat group management, etc., and can only reply to messages sent by users.

This news was confirmed by multiple channels in the industry. Industry insiders familiar with WeChat for Business said that the purpose of the adjustment is for the sake of "fairness": to prevent some companies from "washing traffic" and to show fairness to companies that normally invest in private domain operations and serve users attentively.

The news first came from different industry groups. In the community, many practitioners shared their experiences, showing that their corporate WeChat accounts were unable to send one-to-one or group messages after not renewing for a period of time. According to the screenshots, more restricted functions include:

– Unable to manage and obtain customer details;

– Unable to add customers or invite customers to join the group;

– Unable to use tools and interfaces such as customer contacts, customer groups, customer friend circles, and resignation succession;

– Unable to proactively contact the user.

Among them, it is impossible to actively contact customers, including the one-to-one and group messaging just mentioned, and the management and release of group information.

According to the screenshot, companies can only reply to messages sent by users within 48 hours, which is quite similar to the "private message" function and time constraints of current public accounts.

After the above information was released, it caused a lot of discussion among practitioners.

According to the public statement made by WeChat Work when charging for contact size in 2023 (detailed review: WeChat Work will charge for a basic function): When an enterprise exceeds 2,000 external contacts, it will need to pay. If the contacts (users) have been added before this, even if they do not pay, it will not be affected and they can continue to communicate with, serve, and manage customers. Only when new customers need to be added, they need to purchase according to the total number of customers.

According to previous statements, even if a company chooses not to pay or renew, it will not affect the contact and communication with existing users. The adjustment obviously changed this rule, which has also caused a lot of discussion in the industry.

Meanwhile, Jianshi also conducted a verification and received a positive response. An industry insider familiar with WeChat for Business told Jianshi that this adjustment was just completed recently.

He said that the original intention of the adjustment was to prevent some companies from exploiting loopholes in the original mechanism. Some companies previously registered multiple WeChat accounts to disperse users to avoid reasonable payments. Most of these companies aimed to "wash traffic" and did not pay attention to user services. This behavior not only destroyed the good ecology of WeChat accounts for enterprises, but was also unfair to companies that normally invested in private domain operations and served users attentively.

Therefore, this adjustment will have little impact on the vast majority of companies operating normally.

Interestingly, when the industry was discussing this change, some practitioners said that the other party’s corporate WeChat users were less than 10,000, so they gave up their accounts and did not choose to renew. After this change, the mobile client has been affected by the new regulations, but it can still be used normally on the PC client. After discussion in the group at that time, it was believed that the new regulations have not yet covered the client, and it is estimated that it will be quickly iterated in the near future.