Can Your One Staff Can Serve 9,000,000 customers Everyday like Whatsapp?

Shocking statistics: the world's top 3 instant messaging services with people efficiency as follows:

Whatsapp: 450 million actives users, employs only 50 staff to handle 50 billion messages daily;
WeChat: 600 million registered users, employs 20,000 staff;
Line: 300 million registered users, employs 5,000 staff;

Here's how Whatsapp managed to be so productive employing only 50 staff to serve 450 million customers daily:

Very Simple Product with little or no variation (no premium version). In fact Whatsapp simple product makes it the most used product (as compared to WeChat). Many people including myself use Whatsapp for its no-brainer style that gives reliable results
Systematize operations with each person well trained (employs no intern or inexperienced staff)
Full computerized operations with all 50 people working round the clock in shifts. In this way no problems can be left undetected and solved immediately and there's no need for meetings at all

The best of all, Whatsapp is a standalone company that is profitable as unlike others, its services is not free (one-time US$0.99 for iPhone and yearly US$0.99 for Android users). What's more significant is that there are very few breakdowns and complaints about its services. To top it all, this tiny company rejected take-over by Facebook offering US$1 billion as it reckons that money is not everything. There are definitely many things that we can learn from this tiny company. To learn how to maximize sales like McDonalds, read my other blog at here.

Written by Andy Ng, Chief Trainer at Asia Coaching Training and AsiaTrainers.com. Full list of How to be a Better Manager and Sales Power courses are found at here. Related articles:

The Secret Under the Mattress: Why would a 79-year Man Bet So Big on 4D?

It was 2007 when we discovered his secret. While moving my father’s mattress, we found them: heaps and heaps of Singapore Pools 4D tickets. They were stacked in layers, a paper trail of lost hopes. What shocked us most wasn’t just the volume, but the stakes. He wasn’t betting a few dollars for fun. He was punting hundreds of dollars per draw—nearly ten times a month. At the time, my siblings and I were furious. Our father was a 79-year-old retiree. We wondered, with a mix of anger and confusion, why a man at his stage of life would need to win such "big money." What was he going to do with the money? We saw it as a reckless habit, a sign of poor judgment in his final years. Some of us would say, "If I were to give him money to buy 4D, why don't I use the money and buy 4D myself? At least I have better discipline". It has taken me two decades, and the experience of raising my own three grown-up children, to finally see the truth that was hidden under that matt...

Head Bleeding when the Chair Falls

The Weight of Silence: What Were We Really Arguing About? My earliest memories are punctuated by the sound of shouting. In 1970, when I was barely 6 years old, I stood as a small witness to the fierce quarrels between my father and my late eldest brother Kah Yang (he passed away in 1971 at the age of 17). As I grew up, these contradictions became the soundtrack of our lives, usually centered around our family's shoe shop and clothing stalls in Chinatown. In the court of family opinion, the verdict was almost always the same: my father was "wrong." He was judged as a man who didn't fulfill his role, who wasn't "burdening" enough for the family’s success. But as I look back from the vantage point of 2026, I have to ask: Was that actually true? Let me finally put to rest what my father did right: the truths that were buried under decades of criticism: Unseen Labor: He worked grueling, long hours. I remember him hauling boxes of goods and equipment to set u...

Business and Money Tips

Search This Blog