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EnglishThis company has turned all its employees into loyal AI enthusiasts.
On the DingTalk platform, there is a company that operates in a traditional industry yet boasts over 100,000 “AI-obsessed” employees. Its daily token consumption exceeds 100 million, consistently ranking among the top enterprises on the platform—second only to tech giants like Ant Group and Taobao Flash Sale, as well as other leading internet companies.
That company is Country Garden Services—the largest property management firm in China.
While most traditional businesses remain stuck at the stage of “top-level slogans and small-scale pilot projects,” this leading property manager, overseeing more than 8,000 projects nationwide, has already deeply integrated AI into every employee’s daily workflow. Country Garden Services isn’t just “using AI”; it has transformed itself into a true “AI-driven organization.”
How did Country Garden Services become the premier “AI organization” in the property management sector?
Property management is inherently challenging: residents’ needs differ dramatically between northern and southern regions; older and newer buildings vary widely in infrastructure; and first-time buyers expect something entirely different from those upgrading their homes. Even under a single management company, achieving uniform service standards and operational excellence proves difficult.
Zhao Xiaoguang, Chief Technology Officer of Country Garden Services, pointed out in an exclusive interview with “Biji Xia” that one of the industry’s core pain points is precisely the lack of standardization—a hurdle every property management company must overcome.
“Although basic service guidelines exist, there’s no upper limit to the quality of the experience,” Zhao explained. “Once residents get used to the convenience of hailing a ride via app or ordering food online, they naturally can’t accept the outdated model of visiting the property management office and waiting half a day for a response. It’s the same principle.”
More importantly, labor costs account for the majority of total expenses: security guards, cleaners, concierges, and maintenance staff rely heavily on human effort. Yet manpower is limited—each person has only 24 hours a day—and even at full capacity, efficiency hits a ceiling.
Zhao repeatedly emphasizes the concept of the “technology gap”: the more traditional an industry, the greater its potential for efficiency gains.
On one side are residents’ ever-rising expectations for service; on the other, mounting labor costs. The widening chasm between these two forces is what he calls the “technology gap.”
That’s why, while many companies still adopt a wait-and-see or piecemeal approach to AI transformation, Country Garden Services has elevated AI from a “nice-to-have tool” to a foundational way of working across the entire organization. A single statistic illustrates the depth of this shift: on the DingTalk platform, the company’s daily AI token consumption has surpassed 100 million. Thousands of meeting minutes are automatically generated by AI each day, and among its more than 100,000 employees, over 90% of AI resource usage comes from frontline personnel—including headquarters staff, regional managers, project leaders, concierges, and customer service teams.
Country Garden Services doesn’t limit itself to managing residential complexes; it positions itself as a provider of comprehensive lifestyle services. For years, its central question has been how to leverage technology to boost both management and service efficiency while ensuring residents feel safer and more comfortable.
Guided by this goal, the company pinned its hopes on AI to break through longstanding challenges, taking the crucial first step toward bridging the industry’s “technology gap” and boldly becoming one of the first in the field to fully embrace technological innovation.
Many organizations face the same dilemma when launching digital transformations: systems developed at headquarters often fail to gain traction with frontline workers. Why? Because these tools simply don’t work well in the field, adding administrative burdens instead of lightening them.
Country Garden Services took the opposite path.
As Haier founder Zhang Ruimin once said, “A company’s successful transformation requires a top-down strategic vision combined with bottom-up execution vitality.”
Their AI revolution wasn’t a top-down mandate but rather a gradual, grassroots-driven process that spread from individual use to widespread adoption across the enterprise.
The first core tool embraced company-wide wasn’t built at great expense by headquarters—it was created by frontline employees using DingTalk’s AI Tables.
Why did it catch on so quickly? The answer lies in three simple words: “It actually works.”
Zhao shared, “After DingTalk launched AI Tables, we actively experimented to see where it could solve real-world problems. Before piloting it for inspections, we were already using it for scheduling, project tracking, and even replacing tasks that previously required specialized software. Over time, we found the perfect fit between our workflows and this tool.”
“At the same time, we cultivated digital teams in each region—staff who understand both technology and business—and partnered with DingTalk to run multiple training sessions, teaching frontliners how to build the processes they needed. This inspection system wasn’t designed by corporate IT; after training, frontline teams identified a problem that AI Tables could solve and built the solution themselves.”
What real-world challenges have these employee-developed AI tools addressed?
In the past, the frontline inspection process went like this:
For example, if someone spotted a broken hallway light, they’d take a photo, return to the office to fill out a paper work order, submit it to a supervisor for approval, and then assign it to an electrician. Even moving quickly, the whole process would take at least ten minutes. If any link in the chain failed, the issue might disappear without resolution, leading to resident complaints and accountability for the frontline staff.
Today, the process is vastly different:
Upon discovering a problem, an employee simply snaps a photo with their phone and says into DingTalk, “Light in Unit 2 of Building 3 is broken—needs repair.” The AI instantly recognizes this as a maintenance request, assigns it to the technician responsible for that area, and completes the task in under a minute.
Once repairs are finished, the technician uploads photos of the fixed fixture, and the AI automatically compares before-and-after images to verify the fix, then suggests approval to the project manager.
Common issues like unresponsive follow-ups, unclear progress, and difficulty tracking outcomes have significantly improved, enabling rapid responses and continuous oversight—truly delivering “small issues resolved overnight, major concerns tracked closely.”
Moreover, management can monitor dashboards in DingTalk to track work order volumes, response times, closure rates, and recurring problems in real time, driving data-driven service improvements.
From issue reporting and task assignment to execution, verification, feedback, and system optimization, the entire workflow is transparent, controllable, and yields clear results.
Zhao admitted, “In the past, we collected demands from various locations and distilled common features into our systems, but individualized needs often fell through the cracks. Now, we’ve flipped the logic: if frontliners need a tool, they can build it themselves. We then extract universal capabilities from these practices and codify them into standardized modules.”
This creates a new model: no longer does headquarters force tools down to the workforce; instead, the entire company collaborates to pursue efficient tools and AI applications. Just as many non-programmers today can build websites using low-code platforms, the technical barrier has dropped dramatically.
By keeping an open mind about AI, the company has sparked bottom-up innovation among frontliners, while headquarters swiftly identifies, refines, and rolls out promising solutions nationwide. In this way, individual ingenuity becomes organizational capability, gradually embedding itself as collective “muscle memory” and continuously elevating the company’s service prowess.
This grassroots energy also effectively addresses a thorny issue plaguing large organizations: “information distortion.”
You may have experienced this scenario: a policy decided at headquarters gets watered down by the time it reaches regional offices, and by the time it filters down to the project level, it’s barely recognizable.
The reverse is equally true: resident complaints voiced daily at the frontlines get diluted as they pass through layers of reporting, leaving headquarters unaware of the real situation.
As described in the book “Complexity,” organizational complexity grows exponentially with size.
With over 8,000 projects under its management, Country Garden Services faces this challenge acutely due to its multi-layered structure.
How did they solve it?
Now, they rely on DingTalk meetings and AI transcription to untangle this knot with ease.
On one hand, AI automatically records and summarizes key points from every meeting, making it clear whether decisions were made and communicated, eliminating the risk of incomplete implementation.
On the other hand, resident concerns and genuine difficulties discussed in frontline project meetings are directly aggregated to headquarters via AI transcription and DingTalk AI Tables, cutting out layers of report writing and drastically reducing information loss during transmission.
Over the past year, Country Garden Services has generated 5.38 million hours of AI-transcribed meeting data—equivalent to saving the company over 600 years of manual note-taking. Meeting content is transcribed, highlights extracted, and action items generated, turning what was once a costly time sink into valuable digital assets.
Empowering Every Employee with AI Coaching
If an open organizational culture is the soil for bottom-up AI transformation, then valuing and supporting individuals forms its bedrock.
At Country Garden Services, the true value of AI ultimately lies in empowering every employee. Only by narrowing the gap in professional skills and business acumen, ensuring everyone meets a baseline standard, can the company sustain the innovative energy flowing from the ground up.
In Zhao Xiaoguang’s view, property management boils down to three things: serving people (residents), serving assets, and serving good causes.
In the past, digitization focused on “control”—making sure employees followed prescribed procedures. Today, with AI transformation, the guiding principle has shifted to “empowerment”—using tools to handle routine tasks, freeing staff to deliver warmer, more personalized service.
This aligns with management guru Henry Mintzberg’s famous quote: “The essence of management is not control, but unlocking human potential.”
Take property management concierges as an example.
A single concierge often handles hundreds of residents with diverse needs: elderly singles prefer regular visits and chats, while young professionals value their privacy. When dealing with upset complainants, they must know how to calm tensions; in emergencies, they need to stay composed. Mastering these nuances and techniques goes beyond rote memorization—it requires repeated practice.
Traditionally, training relied on centralized offline workshops. But how could tens of thousands of concierges nationwide be trained at once? New hires, lacking experience, often panic when facing emotional residents, making matters worse.
Now, they turn to DingTalk’s AI coaching feature.
Before starting their roles, new concierges no longer cram regulations—they simulate real-life service scenarios with AI coaching: how to soothe complaining residents, care for senior citizens, or respond to emergencies. Through repeated virtual practice, they gain confidence to handle actual situations with poise.
Country Garden Services simply inputs curriculum frameworks and seasoned concierges’ best practices into the system, and the AI provides one-on-one training for concierges nationwide.
For instance, a new concierge might receive a lesson on “visiting elderly residents.” Upon opening the module, the AI transforms into a slightly hard-of-hearing, slow-talking Mr. Wang, faithfully recreating a typical home visit.
The concierge follows standard steps: checking if the doormat is secure, ensuring hallway lights are bright, confirming the emergency call button functions properly, and patiently asking about the elder’s sleep quality, diet, and medication schedule.
Throughout, the AI monitors in real time: Did the concierge complete all steps? Was their speech appropriately slowed? Were respectful terms used? Did they show any signs of impatience?
After the exercise, the AI scores the performance and provides feedback, clearly pointing out strengths and areas for improvement—for example, “Ask more open-ended questions instead of yes/no queries” or “Remind the resident about bathroom safety.”
“We aim to provide employees with ongoing, AI-powered training, equipping them with communication skills for diverse residents and situations, so they can deliver more heartfelt service,” Zhao said.
Beyond enhancing concierge capabilities, AI support extends throughout property management:
Even the most skilled concierges can’t offer round-the-clock responsiveness; traditional shifts inevitably lead to slower service at night or on holidays. AI can help bridge these gaps, handling routine tasks like consulting rules or submitting maintenance requests, freeing concierges from琐事;
Similarly, elevators, as specialized equipment, have long depended on veteran technicians for maintenance, making consistent quality and accurate failure prediction difficult. AI, however, analyzes operational data to identify potential issues early, greatly boosting the expertise of ordinary maintenance staff.
Through continuous empowerment of every employee, Country Garden Services has not only leveled the playing field across the organization but also unleashed individual potential, fueling endless waves of grassroots innovation.
The Ultimate Mission of AI: Freeing Human Hands, Warming Human Hearts
Every technological revolution in human history has sought to liberate human labor.
If steam engines freed people from grueling physical work, electrification reshaped industrial processes, and the information age broke down knowledge barriers, then this wave of AI is bringing profound dual liberation to property management—the most traditional of everyday industries:
First, it frees frontline service staff from repetitive chores like filling out forms, writing reports, and memorizing rules, allowing them to focus on truly meaningful, human-centered interactions.
Second, it narrows the long-standing efficiency and standardization gap within the industry, offering a replicable, actionable pathway for upgrading this highly fragmented sector.
Country Garden Services leads the industry not because of a single breakthrough innovation, but through sustained internal commitment and external collaboration: unwavering determination and execution internally, coupled with the continuous integration and deepening application of DingTalk’s full-stack AI products and features externally.
Zhao Xiaoguang stated bluntly, “DingTalk is the cornerstone of our internal management modules. We regard DingTalk as our primary mobile office portal—employees access all work-related information, manage end-to-end workflows, conduct meetings, share documents, and develop lightweight apps, all within the platform’s closed ecosystem.”
As Jack Ma once said, “All technologies and innovations must ultimately serve life itself, creating value for society and improving people’s lives; otherwise, they’re meaningless.”
Great AI isn’t meant to replace humans; it’s here to serve them.
True technology doesn’t make service cold; instead, by freeing human hands, it makes service more professional and profoundly humane.
What Country Garden Services and DingTalk are jointly pursuing is safeguarding the original purpose of service through technology—gradually closing the industry’s technology gap with more efficient tools, delivering peace of mind to every residential community and bringing a higher-quality living experience to every resident.
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