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Interviewer: Daily active users of a mobile app by a service provider company has gone down by 7%? How would you go about it?

Shailesh: Thanks for the question; before I jump onto the solution, I want to clarify some questions. What kind of service provider company are we talking about?

Interviewer: We are a home services provider company; we have an app where users can book their services.

Shailesh: Basically, we are a platform company that connects the users to the one who provides services like home cleaning, AC maintenance, grooming services etc. Through our app, the user can search for the services he wants and can book the same.

Interviewer: Exactly

Shailesh: I want to know more about the metrics; what do Daily active users mean? Is it the one who just opens the mobile app or the one who searches for some services, or the one who books the service?

Interviewer: We define daily active users as those who book the service.

Shailesh: Alright, from how long do we see this dip? Is this a seasonal or gradual dip?

Interviewer: We are seeing this for the last one week, and the dip has been gradual

Shailesh: I am assuming that we haven't changed the metric calculation, and the BI tool showing this number is working fine.

Interviewer: Yeah, we haven't changed any metric calculation, and the BI tool is working fine.

Shailesh: Is there any particular geography or demography where we see this kind of dip, or do we see this globally?

Interviewer: We have observed this globally.

Shailesh: I have gotten fair amount of information; let me summarize whatever we have discussed till now. We are a home service provider company, and we are observing our daily active users (who book our services) gradually going down by 7% over the last week globally.

Interviewer: Yes

Shailesh: The way I would like to go about it is to divide the diagnosis into three parts: internal diagnosis, external diagnosis, and consumer behaviour. We will go through each one and mark the potential reasons. At last, we will dig deeper into what we have labelled as likely reasons.

Interviewer: Yes, please go ahead.

Internal Diagnosis

Shailesh: Let's first make an internal diagnosis. Do we see this issue in the mobile app (android or iOS) or desktop app?

Interviewer: We don't have a desktop application, but we see this issue across all the mobile applications.

Shailesh: Is there any server-side or infrastructure issue that may cause the application's frequent crashing and make it inaccessible to the user.

Interviewer: We have checked with the team, but there is nothing like this.

Shailesh: Did we push some code into production, which has some buggy code, making our application crash Or some UI/UX related changes which our user may not be able to understand? Or we have released some new features that may lead to cannibalization?

Interviewer: Yes, we pushed some UI changes in the production last week.

External Diagnosis

Shailesh: Okay, so I am marking this; we will come back to this and dig deeper into this. Now let's move into the external diagnosis. Do we recently have some labour law changes made by the government, which has led to distress among service providers? Or some covid related rules and regulations?

Interviewer: Yes, the residential societies have restricted the entry of service providers due to Covid.

Shailesh: oh, okay, I am marking this as a potential cause. Have we increased the charges of our platform so there is some kind of revolt or disinterest by service providers, which is why they are keeping themselves unavailable.

Interviewer: Nothing that I can relate to.

Shailesh: Okay, is our competitor running some promotional campaign or discounts due to which users have shifted to the competitors?

Interviewer: I don't think that happened last week.

Shailesh: One last question, is there anything that happened in the last week, which may have led to negative sentiments in the users ?

Interviewer: Nothing I am aware of.

Consumer Behaviour

Shailesh: Okay now we will think about consumer behaviour. Is there any massive shift or misinformation regarding something that is floating in the consumer mind which has, in general, shifted the consumer mindset from availing these kind of services?

Interviewer: If there is some kind of shift that has taken place how will you measure it?

Shailesh: We will try to track some metrics as the ratio of the number of people who have opened the app but not completed the transaction to the total number of people who have installed it. We will also look at the total number of people who haven't opened the app to the total number of people who have installed it. If the second metric is going up rapidly, people are not at all willing/thinking about availing these services. This can be a good proxy for the shift in the consumer be behaviour

Interviewer: Yeah that will help

Shailesh: Now that we are done with the diagnosis, it's time to get deep into the issues which we have shortlisted. The first issue which we diagnosed was UI/UX change. I will go deep down through the funnel to check if there has been something wrong.

Interviewer: Sure

Shailesh: The funnel looks like this, the user first lands on the discovery page where the different services are bucketed into different categories like in personal care there can be a salon, grooming etc. In-home decor and maintenance, there can be different services. From there, the user can land to the specific service which he wants. He can view the ratings, reviews, price and then choose the timing to book a slot. He can go to the payment page and select the relevant option to pay. These will be the broad funnel. Have we changed something on the discovery page like making different categories by offers, trending categories, fast paced categories which may mislead the user?

Interviewer: No, we haven't made changes to this window.

Shailesh: Now move on to the specific category, where the user sees the price, rating and choose the date to book a slot. Have we changed something there?

Interviewer: Yes, we have made some changes to this window. Now users can add reviews that can be long text answers. Also, the service providers can add photos and videos. The application can also help them with this if they want.

Shailesh: Okay, I would like to focus on this part of the funnel because this is where we have made recent changes. In such cases, when we give liberty to other user/service provider to add content on their profile pages, this may cause some clickable buttons to shift, and users may not be able to access them. For example, if the users have added a long comment in that window and the booking button is floatable, it will shift to the bottom, and users have to scroll down a lot to make the booking. This can be a possible scenario. So the people who are familiar with the older design may not find it feasible to use. Have you made the changes something like this?

Interviewer: Yes, we made this change.

Shailesh: This can be the cause; let's also look at the payment page's next window. Have we changed the payment page, like removing the trusted seal or adding a different UI, which may cause trust issues in customers?

Interviewer: We haven't made changes to that page. Thankyou you identified the correct problem.

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About Shailesh Sharma

an aspiring Product Manager, Equity Investor, and a Sports Lover.

DAU of an app by service provider company has gone down by 7%? [PM Interview]