What is my goal? Engagement (Retention), new customer, monetization…

Interviewer: Consider you are a CEO

Picking Goal: I think I will pick retention due to the fact that New customer isn’t that big of a problem as 45% world’s population using Facebook, Monetization was never the first priority for Facebook. Retention means: Engagement, so I would probably define my success metrics first, Success metrics will include– 1) DAU with engagement with Messenger, read a message/Send a message or Upgrade the app.

 

Now Customer segmentation: 1) WORKING PROFESSIONAL 2) STUDENTS 3) CUSTOMER SERVICEs (MESSENGER CHAT), I think a huge group of Facebook customer are working professional but they keep juggling between WhatsApp and messenger or any other chat platform. I would like to focus on this segment for engagement. Also I think once the engagement is taken care of, retention will be higher cause due to lack of time of working prof. people, once this segment gets used to with any platform, it is difficult for them to change. others.

Peter:

·        is a mid-aged consultant travels a lot

·        Prefers connecting with friends and family via messenger due to odd timing

·        Juggles between diff chatting platform, uses an iPhone

Thomas:

·        Who is an engineer, prefers calling people than chatting as it involved lot of time to type

·        Thomas also doesn’t do upgrades as he is tired of upgrading other things an engineer

Ji Young:

·        Is PM and very social person

·        Changed country multiple times

·        Not very comfortable with many languages, especially when it comes to Grammar; but at the same time doesn’t prefer calling people

Overall Pain points:

1)     Typing is a huge pain

2)     Language and grammar could be a barrier

3)     Settings could be a barrier too

4)     Latency and App upgrade is a major concern for tech savvy people

Feature Recommendation:

1)Urgent Tagged Messages: Ability to give user send urgent message which will overrule the notification settings and make sure the message is popped up in the phone or with different alert system

2)Auto prediction of answers: Ability to recommend sentences to previous chat-such as “Sounds good”, Looking forward to it” so that use can one click and send reply

3)Language: Ability to convert any message to user preferred language and also ability for users to type reply and own language and select which translation language to pick before sending

4)Latency: Auto upgrade, less frequent upgrade and improve latency without upgrade also

 

Prioritization:

1)Urgent Tagged Messages: Dev estimation- Low, Easy to implement, Business Impact: Medium (8, 5) =13 score (explain how I am scoring)

2)Auto prediction of answers: Dev estimation- High and Business Impact: High (3,9) =12

3)Language: Dev estimation: Medium and Business Impact Medium (6,5) =11

4)Latency: Dev-medium, Business Impact high, (5,9) =14

Prioritize, #4, #1, #2 and backlog #3

Summary: Give a quick brief and tieback to success metrics of how you can attribute these features to business goal defined.

1. Describe the product:

Before jumping into the analysis, I want to clarify my understanding of the product. As per my understanding, fb messenger is a messaging or chatting app and helps users connect more directly with their contacts (even contacts who are not fb users) or SMBs.

– Users can create groups with their contacts, text, video call.

– Users can create a poll, share location, add reminders

– Users can play games, use fb camera to share instant snaps/videos

– Can securely transfer money and split bills between friends

– Can get in touch with businesses to do reservation, place orders etc.

– Is integrated with Uber and lyft so users can hail a ride

Some user groups that use messenger are:

– businesses,  school/college kids, working professionals

Here we will assume it is for regular people (not businesses)

2. Scope of question

Now to clarify the scope of question a little more, are we talking about improvement in terms of :

– number of new users, increased engagement(in terms of time spent, features used etc.) , retention%, number of active users

– also what type of platform we are concerned with : mobile app vs. website

3.  Pain Areas and metrics to measure

With an aim to improve the engagement of the messenger app, we want to understand how each of these features are being used by the users. Hence, some metrics that I would like to track are:

a. Call experience :  Voice calls and group video chats are one of the widely used features of messengers. Can we track and improve quality of video calling?

metrics: % voice calls that ended abruptly (without the user having to hang up). similarly for video calls.
For users who have experienced abrupt call drops, verify the % distribution between android and ios to analyze if this is limited to one os.
Also verify the version of the app used for the users

Tracking method – A/B testing to see whether bug fixes actually improved call quality between control and test groups. Also see if that increase Avg. # of video calls initiated or received by user over 30 days. Also do a pre-post change analysis of this metric. We can also capture direct customer feedback in terms of call rating to evaluate the improvement

b. Text quality: Are users spending more time typing responses? Can it be improved by using predictive responses?

metrics: Avg. # of times user responds in a conversation. Again we

c. B2C: One unique feature of messenger is that it lets users connect directly with businesses easily. Can the service around business to customer (B2C) be improved? User generally use this to make reservations, place orders etc. We can implement enhancements like integrating this with ubereats or seamless or any food ordering apps for restaurants.

Metrics: %of users using this feature, Avg. # of chats initiated with businesses per user, Avg. # of orders placed. Again implement A/B test and measure change in these metrics over 1 month between control and test groups