Product Improvement case problem for product management interview

Product Improvement question: How can Swiggy Improve?

Problem Statement given in a Product manager Interview: Come up with different possibilities on the product roadmap assuming you are a Head Product Manager at Swiggy?

Swiggy is a food delivery app with the vision to elevate the quality of life for the urban consumer by offering unparalleled convenience. Swiggy has also ventured into delivering groceries and similar items, along with delivering food. Swiggy is currently considered having a duopoly in the market but the pandemic has boosted the food and grocery delivery industry which is attracting new competitors to emerge along with the government trying to regulate it.

Before diving into answering the question, let’s consider a couple of clarifying questions to scope the problem. Let’s think of this as a Product Manager Interview simulation. Putting down the likely dialogue flow between the Interviewer and someone looking for a Product Manager Job.

Me: Is there a specific goal that we are looking to achieve because of the improvement?

Interviewer: It’s up to you.

Me: Swiggy is a three way marketplace, with the restaurants, the delivery partners and the consumers as the three legs. Is it okay to focus on the consumer app for the sake of simplicity in this problem statement? The reason I pick this up is because I am mostly aware of the functionalities of the app as a user myself.

Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Me: Also Swiggy has the verticals to order food, Instamart and Genie, are we looking to focus specifically on any one of these?

Interviewer: You can focus on one or more. It’s up to you.

Summarising the Problem Statement to improve product apps like Swiggy

Based on the above answers let me summarise the problem statement we’re trying to solve in the Product Manager Interview: I’d like to focus on the goal of increasing customer retention and in turn the revenue. Swiggy is a popular name and I believe user acquisition is no longer a problem considering the market dynamics. The focus should be to retain the acquired customers and on generating revenue given the business may want to go Public as many of the competitors all across the world have. Is that fine by you?

Interviewer: Sure, go for it.

Now that we have the goal we are trying to achieve, let's look at the user personas in the light of who they are, what they do, how they use our product and when. This is important because the value creation is by the context in which the product is used.

Identifying three user personas before trying to improve the product.

The user personas:

- Households - A family which has grandparents, kids usually around 4-6 people. Mostly these users cook their own food and don’t order in too often unless there are guests or once a week when they want to be off duty. They prefer food that is healthy and suited for kids and older folks. They have decent spending power and don’t mind paying extra for good quality

- College students - College students are given a monthly budget to spend whilst they are away from family. They have a hostel mess which is already paid for, but do not serve the best food. They like trying new things and are hugely influenced by their friends. The low budgets coupled with lower hygiene standards and the need to hang out with friends leads them to eat on stalls close to the colleges which are often much cheaper

- Working individuals - With the fast paced life and high career ambitions this segment either doesn’t like to cook or doesn’t have the time to do so. They do have disposable income given decent salaries and lesser responsibilities/dependencies. They have colleagues and friends who recommend places and dishes. They mostly order-in 4 times a week and go out on the weekends.

With the given context I would like to prioritise the personas based on their LTV (Lifetime value) to the business:

Households don’t order often but do have a bigger ticket size. There is an opportunity to upsell groceries to such users which increases the value they can add over time. Working individuals order too often and are too lazy to go to kirana stores for daily supplies as well. Therefore taking into consideration, the user needs, the context in which they use our product and the value generation I will like to prioritise the households and working individuals as the target persona. Are you with me so far?

Interviewer: Yeah.

User Journeys for Swiggy app

Pain Points of existing Swiggy Users

Now going through the user journey let’s figure out a few pain points that the users experience. We can also have some of their accepted customer beliefs added to this list which hampers our users from using our product to the desired level of engagement. We want to turn these accepted customer beliefs into desired customer beliefs.

• Buying groceries from Swiggy is expensive and they may not be as fresh
• Swiggy doesn’t tell me about the new places opened up in my area and especially the ones that serve the food I usually order
• I don’t want to order when I am very hungry as it takes me forever to explore
• I don’t feel the same emotion about the food as I do when I visit a fancy restaurant. The platform is quite transactional

• In a household I have to run around the house, asking everyone what they want to eat which increases the ordering time dramatically and is quite frustrating. When I have a party or have a few friends over it is so difficult to get everyone’s order
• Every restaurant seems to have a good rating which makes it look less trustworthy and more rigged.

Let’s look at some innovative food delivery ideas to overcome these pain points:

• Users who order food from restaurants specially households can be sent a complimentary sample of an item from Instamart. This can help them get a sense of the quality and with some coupons they can be lured into purchasing groceries from Swiggy. Once the order is delivered they can be nudged using a push notification asking how did you like the complimentary item, head over to Instamart for all your grocery needs. The one challenge is that the delivery partner has to stop at the store to pick up complimentary stuff but this can be done in bulk during their downtime. The partners can be compensated extra for doing so. One thing to note: humans love getting anything free so this can be a delight
• Swiggy can collaborate with the new restaurants that are about to be opened or have recently opened. There can be short videos giving a glimpse of the food, the story behind the business or story from one of the chefs. This content can be extended to having a video/story of delivery partners. Having this on the feed makes it an emotional experience and can influence users' ordering decision. Even a short description about the restaurant in the menu detail page makes users feel more connected to places they order from. People can also share this content with friends and family

• Since the ratings are not the best way to evaluate a restaurant because people rate dishes and their experience with the delivery. These parameters cannot be perceived as a global restaurant rating.Therefore showing ratings for individual menu items is more accurate.The other way to showcase a restaurant’s popularity is to show “x orders in the last week” which is also a way to create the bandwagon effect
• Group orders: A button for group orders inside the menu listing page creates a link that can be shared with people. On tapping the link it opens the order page for that restaurant and people can add items. The link stays alive for 10 minutes or so in order to create an urgency to add items to the cart after which the order can be placed
• Schedule orders: Users should be able to schedule their food deliveries. This is a slightly complex feature as the availability of that item, timing of the restaurant, availability of delivery partners need to be worked around. But these can be calculated and we have something similar on Instamart as well other competitors have it implemented
• The concept of variable reward can be a way to keep bringing users back to the platform. After an order is placed, the users can get coupon/scratch cards randomly which gives them offers and discounts. This also adds a touch of personalization instead of using the same coupon (40% OFF using SWIGGYIT) available for everyone.

The next step is to prioritise these solutions on a roadmap. The approach I'd like to take is using the RICE framework. Another important thing to consider while prioritising is that Swiggy looks for win-win-win while evaluating possible projects/features. Each project is evaluated from the perspective of whether it would provide a ‘win’ for consumers, a ‘win’ for restaurants, and a ‘win’ for delivery partners.

18 Months Roadmap to improve Swiggy.

The roadmap for these innovative food delivery ideas can be defined as following:

• 18 months: Perspective about key levers in the food delivery business model and how they might evolve
• 6 months: Visibility on business metrics and goals
• 3 months: A detailed quarterly product roadmap and the corresponding execution plan.

3 Months: Adding ratings to each menu item, adding descriptions about restaurants are not too complex but also have low impact. This can be teamed up with showing curated content about newly opened restaurants, chef stories or delivery partner stories for the 3month roadmap.

6 Months: Scheduling orders, complimentary items and scratch cards as features can be a part of the 6 month plan as it focuses on the goal of retention and increasing revenue.

18 Months: Finally, for GroupOrders we need to talk to customers or roll out a landing page to see how many users actually want such a feature before investing in it and therefore it can be a part of a long-term roadmap. Further Product Managers at Swiggy need to think of strategies around competitors like Peppo and government regulations around commission charges and sharing customer data.

Finally, the roadmap should be well balanced to accommodate quick wins, metric movers, big bets, delighters, qualified experiments and tech backlog.

We can measure success with these new innovative food delivery ideas by looking at:

1. How many people are clicking on the curated content and then placing orders
2. How many people are sharing the curated content about restaurants.
3. Percentage of people placing Instamart orders after receiving a complimentary item
4. Number of people scheduling orders
5. 7 day retention rate
6. % increase or decrease in the #of orders placed by customers in a week
7. # group orders
8. AOV
I hope this will be helpful to you, if you want to prepare for Product Management role by Microsoft, Adobe and Accenture Product Managers you can join our latest cohort batch.