Root Cause Analysis Mock Interview with Piyush Sharma, Product Manager at Cure.Fit

[Music] hi everyone welcome back to the pm school's youtube channel uh today i am delighted to welcome uh p.u sharma with us um hi pious how are you hey kanjin i'm all good how are you i'm great too pews i'd like you to uh just introduce yourself and your journey in your own words sure thank you hey everyone this is pio sharma and i'm a product manager from curefit i have done my postgraduate program for indian school of business and i worked in oracle financial services as a software developer and in a startup called bikes

approach manager uh i'm grateful to be here and i am looking forward to this interview uh we are also delighted to have you push so uh also uh because piyush has been a software developer and again we have a large chunk of pm aspirants who would like to shift from uh software development domains or other development domains to product management domain so we'll do a short trory piece uh with push where he'll share his journey okay so uh today we are going to do a mock interview which is going to be a root cause analysis

mock interview so right now i am communicating this uh for our viewers but when you go to the interview you might not actually know that it's a root cause analysis so please focus on the kind of problem statement that i'll give to push so hi push welcome today your problem statement is that uh we have we are a company which is into providing a platform for service providers these are all individual uh freelance service providers to uh consumers so it's like a c2c service provision platform and we have observed that over the past week our

daily active users have declined by around six to seven percent so please identify the reasons for these and uh based on the reasons what would your approach be in solving this problem for us okay great uh so kanjin i would like to start with summarizing the problem which you gave me so that we are on the same page so the issue which we are trying to find today is that the dius that is the daily active users for the service booking or service based platform has gone down first as on six to seven percent right

so i have a few clarifying questions which i would like to ask for so that i am know the context and then i'll start looking building my framework and how i'm going to solve this so first question which i would like to ask is when you mean service working what exactly what services do we are we exactly providing like uh can you say c2c so what services or what kind of service we are doing yeah so uh these are mainly uh i would say the home related services or personal lifestyle related services so you can

consider it as a platform where various electricians come plumbers interior designers salon professionals um so anything that let's say an individual would do right uh it could be related to health grooming home improvement home repairs vehicle repairs anything of that sort okay my second question to you is when we say dius that is a daily active users what do you exactly mean by that like uh like what activity are you referring to whether it is like opening the app or visiting the website or whether it is like browsing the app or website or whether it

is like completing a booking and like booking a handyman a very good question uh so yes here uh we term our daily active users as the users who come to our platform and they actually complete the bookings so they're also essentially our transacting users so basically here when the da's are fallen that means that the number of bookings has fallen down yes i would also like to clarify the time frame whether this is happening very recently like over a week or so or whether it has some pattern like is it a one time event or

is it a like pattern it doesn't yeah so um over the past few weeks it had seemed like a consistent uh growth but in the last week so let's say today we are standing uh at uh friday um since last friday we have observed that it has been a declining graph okay and that is around six to seven percent yeah so let's consider that a week on week reduction uh in the dows is around six to seven percent i also forgot one last question which i wanted to ask uh which platform is this drop happening

whether it is happening on only app or website yeah so uh a fair question now we don't actually have a website so we just have like a landing page kind of a website where we read out them to and to a mobile app so it's we only have a mobile app got it i'll just take two minutes of time and i'll just uh write down my uh thoughts like how i want to approach this and then i'll present it to you and then we can start okay okay uh i think we can start so uh

how i'm trying to approach is this is that i will just share with me share with you the overall framework which i'm going to follow i like the different components within that and accordingly then we can go through them one by one and try to figure out what is the cause for this so since this is this looks like a very technical this might cannot be a technical problem so first i'll start with my product which i'm handling that which can be a cause like there might be some technical changes done or there might be

some version released or there might be some fault in that like technical issues because of this app might be crashing so first i'll go forward with the product changes or like my product second thing i will be going towards is if that doesn't happen then i will look towards what other teams have done in the last week like what they released last week apart from my team which might have caused this issue apart from this if even this does not uh cause this then we i will start looking towards within the company like this was

there any strategy change then or was there is a marketing message given out to users which might have caused the change in the user behavior or the trend and lastly even if this all these three of internal factors are not the cause then i would like to go towards the external factors which can be the some political changes or some news changes in the specific industry which might have affect our users to come to our app if you have any specific questions for me on this framework i would i'm happy to answer uh no this

works let's just uh go into the framework and then we'll see in between so since we are looking to whatsapp the product first i would like to uh check first and foremost the tool which we are using to check whether this uh data which we have received that a drop of six to seven percent whether that tool is working fine or not whether that since it can be a third-party tool right so they might have some issues there so whether is the tool fine and the data we are getting is that accurate yeah so uh

when we were observing this decline we had gotten uh we had gotten the reports and uh we had seen if all the data is being pushed uh in the correct manner or in the rather the normal manner and it is working fine okay great since uh the tool is correct and the data which we are getting is correct uh one other thing which i would like to consider is like have we face any such similar issue in the past like have you seen anything like this like a drop of users in the past uh we

have obviously uh but not in the recent months okay great so this can be somewhere uh we so i would then strike out as a specific pattern that it might happen in any specific day or any specific day of the week it is not happening that one okay great so then i would like to move towards the product itself like i would like to see the product which uh which i am handling right so suppose uh in this case in the service booking so if my product is i'm handling the service product i would like

to check first that whether in the entire user flow of the journey where the user is failing and then also i will be checking whether is it because of the any existing changes we did or very released or like also it i'll also be checking whether this is happening for the any new users or whether it is happening for the old users so i'll start with the users first because it cannot be the scenario so is it happening for the new user so it is happening for existing users uh no so there is no certain

pattern observed uh it's like a consistent uh you can say there's a there's an equal uh decline between both okay equal decline between both new and uh users and is this decline specific to any specific region like demography of the users like in the regions which we are offering these services is it spread across informally or is there any specific spike in some of the regions no no regional uh differences are observed okay great so then that brings me to the changes which we might have done okay did we release any specific changes over the

last few weeks very specifically of the last week where we started seeing the trend to go down uh yeah we did uh up we did like release an update uh and the update had merely some cosmetic uh changes so basically we improved the ui ux improvement uh experience for the user yeah okay then i think in this case we should analyze the entire funnel where the user goes through in terms of the point where he starts his journey on our app and the point he's reaches where he does the booking and we'll try to figure

out where exactly this drop-off might be happening due to which the bookings have gone down so uh i'll just lay out the process generally which happens in a uh the funnel and just correct me or like um if there's something you want to add there if i might have missed something so basically i'm considering this is a normal app uh like basic app which we usually have you know for a service booking suppose if i log into my app and i'm already here since this is happening to uniformly to both new users and with the

login user everything the cases offer already existing users so everything the signup is in the login is done and the user knows the entire structure of the app so he's using it so now my user comes to my app he launches the app then he starts looking browsing towards on his home page he starts browsing towards the specific handyman or specific repair or service he's looking for and then going into that section he starts going through the list of service providers which we have then uh selecting one of them and then he goes to the

detail page goes through the uh and then checks his rate what the rates and what's the time slot available for booking and accordingly then the user selects that use specific service provider and does the booking now is that flow fine or do you uh want any specific changes here no that flow works okay great so in this entire flow which we just discussed do we see uh drop-offs only in booking like i already asked but i just want to clarify once more do we see the drop-offs only when the bookings happen or do we see

drop-offs on the homepage or some places why i'm asking this is because there might be some cases where some technical issues have crept in when the we released these changes last week because of which the experience might have worsened for the users on the home page or on the specific level to level three pages okay um good that you clarified that so um what we've observed is that at least the discovery element right so on the home page when the user used to discover the uh maybe the service providers and the booking options all of

that remains consistent um so you might want to dig deeper into the funnel okay great that really helps so then i will start uh look at the funnel since the discovery is happening properly so maybe like then we need to look towards the later part of the funnel where the user actually tries to book so suppose there is a user who then supposes lets a plumber so he has selected this category as plumber and then he gets a list of all the plumbers and here i would like to check whether the all the list whether

the list of all the that specific category is does it populate is it populating fine whether there is any drop-off here it's 5-5 so then the user is able to select one of these uh specific uh plumbers then he moves towards the detail page this plumber detail page and then he goes uh now here did we do any specific changes on this page the detail page of the service provider yeah we did so we figured out from our research that providing more details and background on the service providers would probably help the users get more

info make more informed decisions so we just have added more information okay so when we say then we have added more information i'm considering that we the basic information which we provide generally which is the name of the user and the number of bookings he has completed the number of reviews he has done the price he takes and the feedback apart from this do we have anything extra on this do we have yet basically added a few reviews uh that come for that particular service provider so there's like a review section that has been added

and we also added uh some custom services that that particular serviceman would provide or service person would provide right so for example not all plumbers know how to let's say install fixtures or maybe not all salon professionals know how to do a certain kind of hair treatment so those kind of specific custom details we have added and these are long text answers so they are they can be added by the service providers themselves or if they want assistance we can do it for them as well okay great so i would like to focus on this

part of the funnel because this is the most recent change which we have done and we have also given the liberty to the specific service providers to add the content tenses which might cause the specific clickable elements like basic buttons or basic cts call to actions which might user take to make the booking so when we when we have made these changes i'm assuming that generally when we uh in such kind of scenarios the booking button or the booking feature generally stays on the top so having made any changes there or like and we started

adding these custom elements have we pushed down the specific booking button so that when the user sees the entire details about the specific provider then he goes and starts the booking yeah that has happened okay so then i think that uh it can be one of the scenarios due to which the users who might be friendly to the older design which was like the button which was on the top of the page has gone to the bottom of the page and they might not be able to find it they might be think they might have

to do a few more scrolls so can we check with the analytics team and see whether the scrolling uh whether that can be one of the issues and uh we can figure out maybe like if the user has to scroll because in this cases they track by using file name whether the small version or not if the users are going back without doing that scroll then maybe that is the scenario because they are not able to find that sure yeah so um that's a fair point and that seems to be the problem here i think

you identified it correctly okay i think uh apart from this there might also be a few cases which we should consider because uh this cannot be the entire scenario why in such a way is because even though this has happened generally who look a person who is looking for this uh booking a service generally if he's not able to find a booking button then he might scroll it might not be like it can be the case of users who did not do this but it can also be the case that a few folks who did

scroll and then maybe uh they move to the next step and there something might have happened so uh let's check for that also and apart from that i also want to uh check a few external factors because we are living in strange times we have a specific uh dynamic situation going on and that can also impact so generally i'd also look uh try to look towards the fourth point which i mentioned the external factors which are happening okay so on the booking page element so when suppose if the user is also going towards the booking

page element uh was there any specific changes then on that page also like when the final pages is done no so the checkout uh essentially the checkout is what we call your uh the booking page that's the same okay the checkout element is completely same so the other team which is handling the checkout process nothing no changes have been deployed from there so we can rule out that project and apart from this uh has there been any specific uh company white uh strategy change or has there been any specific change in terms of the marketing

which we used to do because of which the this can cause users to not come or not on our app clearly so just uh when the pandemic situation hit of course we had to uh because it's a service provision company where there is a personal contact or a personal meeting required so we had to uh the pr teams that we had uh they had done some campaigns around uh communicating that we are covet safe or rather we do adhere to all the covet guidelines and there were a few advertisements that were floated but but those

were not in the last one week okay got it and did we specifically announce these changes on our the landing page of the website and the homepage of our app yeah but not in the last week no they are they have been there since uh around uh a few months photo okay got it and also i would uh like to check for the external factors like from outside of the company this is a kovid era so i would like to consider specific changes which might have happened in terms of the industry which we are looking

at there can be some scenarios where uh some news which came in terms of the if like did we did any of our service providers who are going writing the service did that test any positive or i would like to check in that whether there was any lockdown done in a specific region so hasn't been any specific uh news for this industry in terms of like guidelines which they need to follow because like the country is opening in face by phase so is there any specific guideline for this like like again a lockdown or something

yeah so uh what has happened is that a lot of residences right a lot of societies they have essentially uh put up their own restrictions on outside people coming in okay that could be um probably what can be one guideline that uh can be useful to you yeah i think that can be one of the scenarios because if the outside folks are not allowed inside maybe because of the against scare again then the users who even who might want to book their own people and they would be looking for someone local which are allowed inside

then that can be one scenario apart from that i also like to say did government announce any specific changes or like did anything happen in terms of the did we find any person who was providing the services who was tested positive and media picked it up and like raise it out of proportion no no nothing of nothing that would so there were certain uh let's say food delivery agent related news that spread uh but that was not directly to a type of service that we provide or the type of safety that we can afford to

adhere to okay got it and one last thing i would like to check is that uh since we are also checking all the external factors is like i would like to do uh check two last things one is the competitors and one is user behavior changes or the trends due to this did any competitor recently came up or like started doing a specific campaign which might have caused users to shift to that that platform and not use ourselves uh nothing that was again uh i mean they've been doing what they've been doing uh but nothing

that was launched or that just got initiated in the last week okay got it one thing we finally i would like to check is the user trends so like basically the users which we have generally so in those entire scenario the uh entire usage trends has that significantly fallen like not just like in fallen in terms of like obviously it is following here but the trends of using these services has been fallen over the last one week for the due to external factors um i would like to like ask you a cross question on that

um it's an app right it's a mobile app so would as a pm would what would you look at on the play store uh to kind of validate this or because i think i would uh start looking at the app install numbers and the free customer feedbacks so these two things i think uh would be helpful in me determining that what can be the cause here also uninstalls right like what i personally feel is that a lot of the apps that we used to use pre-covered during the lockdown phase we did not even open those

apps or click on those apps so they were there we did not go and uninstall them but they were not updated and then when we finally went there after two three months we either had to either would update those or we would uninstall those yeah um so yeah even those you could check but yeah nothing off again nothing of that sort right so i think you wish uh you really covered all the aspects and um i think if you want to like probably conclude you can okay uh thanks nanjing this has been really interesting uh

so i'd like to summarize this now the problem which we're solving for is the drop in the da use for the service booking platform over six to seven percent and we went through an inside to outside approach where we first checked the internal factors and we move towards sectional factors while checking towards the internal factors we realize we found out that the recent changes which were done in the last week towards improving the user interface and adding a few custom elements that caused a users to not able to find out the exact booking way and

the booking actions because which we saw a drop like user went to that part of the page and then went back because he was not able to find how to book address this maybe what we can do is we can do further testings here maybe we can launch internal tests launch it to our internal users first we can launch it to the internal company folks and then we'll launch a specific set of our super users to take their feedback apart from this what we can also do is we can start looking towards any specific issues

raised by these customers by maybe in terms of a support channel or any feedback left by them in a google play store apart from them when we started going towards the external factors we realized that it can also be caused by some of the changes the guidelines mentioned by the housing societies in specific areas and that can cause the users to not use these services uh for this basically like this is totally out of our control and but yeah we can what we think we can do from a company point uh from a business point

of view is that we can do a stronger marketing in this sense that we are totally covered safe and we provide the we go through all the measures all the safety guidelines provided by government and all our service providers also do that and i think that should really help in getting those numbers back on sure uh that was wonderful so i do not really know many more points that i can add probably you just covered it very beautifully next section which is how did you transition from a software development background to a product management background

and i think you have done it pre-isb itself right so a lot of people think that you need to go to a b school in order to do that and i am an example of that and not that i had to do it but it just happened for me that my journey was started that way but how did you do like a lateral switch or rather a transition from this development background to a product management background okay sure as i already mentioned in the start i have worked with oracle financial services for three years as

a applications developer today i was working on the banking systems and the payment related system but the thing is generally it usually happens is that you people want to take towards most managerial positions and i do not did not want to move forward in a technical role i wanted to build products but i also wanted to control the design aspects and the strategy aspects of the things and that's why i thought that i should take a stab at this role when i started researching i found out that the product management is one of the great

way to go forward which i wanted to achieve and i realized that if i want to break into product management i cannot directly take in a very senior role and the only way which i can do this like which i worked for me is i start approaching the startups like very nascent startups which are looking for experienced folks in the in terms of the software experience because generally that is the way you move to a product management road it can be either you generally stay in a software role for some time and then you move

towards the product in the same company or in a different company or as you said you generally do an mba and then move towards the product tool so the recent startup we that we worked for me because generally these folks are looking for people uh who are dedicated enough uh to work on this exciting project so feedbacks came to the su for me it is an electric community domain startup we uh i approached the folks and i i presented my case in terms of that uh i want to they were actually looking for product managers

and like it was a mixed kind of role like it is more like a technical product manager so my role there was not just like my but also like development of the product also in terms of coding so since it was a very small company in terms of like just 10 employees so they took a stab at it and that actually worked for me i worked with them for around seven to eight months and then at the same time like at a time when i was in oracle i realized that i need to do further

studies so i started applying for these colleges and luckily isd worked for me and those after eight months i moved back to like move to college so after that like basically i realized that i want to move back to product role and hence i just focused towards the rules only when we had placements and profit work from sure that's a really well put story and i really uh feel that this is a good way for anybody who wants to break especially from technical domains to a more managerial or a more product management related domain you

need not be like an overnight you need not transition overnight and you need not consider yourself i mean you you need not think that you'll get all of the product responsibilities right away and that you'll shift from a technical to a purely managerial background probably taking like taking interim steps would also help and also taking projects which are outside of your job description right especially if you're if you're in a tech background and if you are anywhere working on codes of a product then asking why that product is necessary focusing on the strategy of that

product seeing how that product is marketed outside maybe those kind of pro bono or proactive initiatives would also help you break into product management in a much better way i totally agree and i'd like to add that in that role mostly what i learned about work management was actually by doing those projects like as you said you should take more projects in those days by i learned whatever about what a pm does by doing those tasks and actually that helped me in converting my sv application perfect okay this was uh great push i hope we

can further collaborate for more such mock interviews or maybe some other uh product management concept related uh conversations um for all of our viewers uh if you found this video helpful uh and if you don't need any guidance from me push and the pm school content uh please make sure that you subscribe to this channel uh i'll leave push's handle and my handle in the description box and if you have any questions on this particular case then please comment below so that uh we'll bring views to answer those questions for you or maybe i can

take a stab at answering those thank you push we hope you stay safe and take care all the best thanks