How Youzan Built an End‑to‑End Closed‑Loop Workflow to Cut Demand‑Management Waste

Background

Youzan, a SaaS provider for merchants, faces complex B‑to‑B product scenarios where merchant feedback drives both immediate activity and long‑term product design. Before improvement, feedback arrived through multiple channels (BBS forum, product‑side entry, hotline, service manager) without unified management, leading to wasteful processes.

Key Problems

No single backlog for merchant requests, making tracking and planning difficult.

Progress updates were opaque, causing repeated communication.

Lack of clear hand‑off procedures slowed downstream teams.

Results were not closed‑looped back to merchants, reducing satisfaction.

Inability to analyze aggregated requests limited product insight.

1. Establishing an End‑to‑End Closed‑Loop Workflow

The workflow links all necessary participants, defines each step, and assigns clear responsibilities, enabling new hires to follow the process with minimal training.

Three essential points:

Task flow must be a closed loop with a defined direction and order.

Task hand‑off standards and boundaries are explicitly documented.

Driving forces (coordination mechanisms and constraints) are clarified.

Benefits observed:

Clear role definitions allow upstream and downstream teams to collaborate continuously and set initial handling timeframes.

A unified backlog and fixed communication channels prioritize critical and urgent requests for development.

Designated owners for each product module improve internal communication and processing efficiency.

2. Tackling Bottlenecks with SLA (Service‑Level Agreement)

Applying Theory of Constraints, the slowest stage determines overall throughput. Youzan split the demand‑handling loop into two cycles:

Response Cycle

Merchant → Hotline/Service Manager (record & assign) → Product Manager (evaluate relevance) → Service Manager/Hotline (reply to merchant).

Solution Cycle

Product Manager designs solution → Development schedules → Development releases → Service Manager/Hotline notifies merchant.

Each stage now has an SLA target; violations trigger escalation, ensuring timely processing.

Key observations:

Timely merchant feedback improves merchant experience and provides fresh usage insights.

Monthly merchant requests exceed a thousand, consuming significant human resources.

These resources represent “unnecessary waste” that merchants will never pay for.

3. Reducing Cost of Request Prioritization

Prioritization uses two dimensions: merchant profile (industry complexity) and feedback volume. High‑impact merchants (industry leaders with complex scenarios) are weighted more heavily, and requests affecting many merchants are grouped to address common pain points.

4. Reducing Cost of Progress Feedback

By integrating merchant feedback portals (Micro‑Mall, Retail) with Youzan's demand pool, merchants can submit issues and view real‑time status, cutting manual registration and follow‑up effort.

5. Online Management Tool

Previously, documents and spreadsheets tracked requests, causing stale updates and information asymmetry. The new internal “Efficiency Platform” consolidates the entire demand lifecycle—from submission to development release—into a single system.

Design considerations:

Identify key users and their goals (business wants transparent progress; product managers want fewer steps; managers want performance metrics).

Define essential information to display (reporter, assignee, merchant details, status, timestamps, priority, related product module).

Map usage scenarios for each role (submission, triage, progress check).

Benefits of tool online:

Lower onboarding cost for newcomers.

Unified lifecycle eliminates manual progress maintenance and keeps upstream/downstream data aligned.

System data enables measurement, analysis, and informed process optimization.

Keyword analysis of merchant feedback uncovers hot modules and industry trends for product improvement.

Conclusion

Youzan serves a massive merchant base; standard products meet most needs, but diverse custom requests strain limited manpower. By establishing a closed‑loop workflow, SLA‑driven bottleneck mitigation, and an online management platform, Youzan reduces waste, improves transparency, and creates data‑driven insights that support agile product evolution.