Product Sense Mock Interview for DOORDASH

0:00 so Yun how would we fix airbnb's worst post booking experience hi everyone I'm Diana one of your favorite PM coaches today I have Yun here who is gonna go through a door Dash question with us so do you want to give a short intro yeah hello everybody my name is y I was a PM at Microsoft and another AI company and I recently joined the door Dash huge congrats Yun not many people passed the r interviews so she was

0:30 gracious enough today to give you guys a snippet because her big pain point was not being able to find much information from door Dash yeah yeah that was it was hard to prepare that interview hope this is could be helpful for everyone here and she made it so today we're going to have her Excellence to show us the way to tackle this question which is Yun let's say you're a PM on Airbnb how what might we fix the worst

0:59 post booking experience BB can I have one minute to organize my thoughts first of course let's say couple bullet point that's how I'm going to start talking about the interview the question I will start talking about the product U try to understand what is Airbnb for the users and how they make money and then goes through the Matrix pick one of the matric that will be our North Side matric to evaluate this Pro the the questions and

1:32 then go to the user Journey or we call it how it works to understand the whole process and then from that it was just easier for me to go through go through that first and then find the pain points during that J the journey and we'll PRI prioritize them based on some criterias I picked and then maybe pick one the use a pinpoint to go go to the solution space does that sounds good fantastic and then I'll be asking follow

2:02 questions along the way so if you can take paes throughout yeah awesome sounds good so yeah so let's get started for Airbnb I think most of people know it it's a market place for owners to rent their places so the guests can stay for their trip and guests can find the place that they want to stay during their trip and it's different than hotels it's more like a home homey experience and more local homie and I

2:35 used it before like when I was in go to going to Hawaii that I don't want to stay in a hotel it's super expensive and also I want to have some friends to to to make some friends when I was there I think many people kind of do that way for while we talk about that what is the Airbnb we also me I also mention about the users the user segments for MVB there are two user

3:03 segments I would say maybe let's say one we call that host who the the owner of the house and they rent the places out another is it's called a a guest like you book the place to stay and we can say Airbnb as a third party of this whole platform and themselves they want to make money and and the business model I would like to mention here a little bit so

3:34 that will impact the Matrix I pick later how Airbnb makes money is based on the charging fees for every of the transactions when you book nights or book experience there they charge fees for each of the charge certain fees for each of the transactions and that leads us to The Matrix what Matrix I want to pick for this whole problem that we're supposed to booking experience yeah

4:05 I'll have you brainstorm a couple and then maybe tell me which one you would prioritize okay sounds good give me 30 second to think about all the matrics I should pick good I write down three Matrix here when I was thinking about what Matrix we can pick the number one is the number of nights booked and stay per day which I mean here they successfully checked in and stay at that place not just not just booked and then for

4:33 some reason you didn't go I don't think that to count the reason I picked this one is I think this is a Northstar for Airbnb because this is intersection of all three part is host gas and everyb a host get value when people book The niare they make the money and G get the value they find a good place for them to stay U so they get the value when the night is book and stay and for of course

5:02 mbb get the value U because they make money for for every transaction for every stat and I know they really care about this number of nights and they a lot of report they keep talking about how they're growing the this number of nice books is very important to them for retention initially I think about retention maybe retention for this problem but I find it's really hard to use the retention here here's my reason when a customer

5:35 has bad experience the impact is they might don't come back for book another trip useb to book another trip but it's hard to measure because you're not using as a person like me I might go travel twice a year but some people might travel once a year or some people might travel you know even less frequent so if they don't come back in let's say in a year you can't say it's because they have a bad experience there

6:06 it might be just they're not traveling that frequent or it might be the places they go they don't have Airbnb there they they have more Hotel choices there so they end up choosing Hotel other than A&B so I found the retention is really hard to measure here so I'm not going to pick this one okay I also think about using rating as a metrix here but I also find it not that great

6:36 to be used here because not everybody give the ratings normally only you have very good experience or very bad experience The Very extreme experiences and then you give rating most of people just lzy not get ratings so I find that ratings is not may not be a good Matrix here either right so let's go with yeah number of nights booked yeah okay sounds good here's the user journey of using

7:06 Airbnb it covers both the sides the host and the guest yeah let's take a look at the pain points and feel free to take 30 seconds yeah so I will work on the paino for both of the parties I think this whole journey covers both of the parties and yeah give me 30 a second sounds good thank you

7:37 and since we're talking about post the booking experience and I'm going to only talk about the pain points like post the booking yeah perfect that's good

8:14 okay I'm ready to talk about the pain points so let's say pain points for guests and hosts for guest I thinking about post booking what other the things can happen that go mhm one thing is cancellation that charges a high fee you if you want to change your plan sometime they don't let you cancel or if you cancel you have to charge a high fee like that that's painful when you when you that's

8:46 painful when you don't have that budget for that and hard to find the place I had one time like I was when as I mentioned I was in Maui that place was in our middle of some Forest so actually it takes me a while to find that place and there was no no information about it on the on the Airbnb information on the Airbnb like the detail page I had to I had to kind

9:16 of like navigate it myself and the Google doesn't work very well there and then the second problem can the third problem can happen is you can't check in it can be multiple reasons like there's no room available like you you went there there was no room available and that had happened to me once that I I I booked the mbb with my friends and I didn't really look for the confirmation email I thought it was

9:47 just down you know I booked it and I thought it was down but then when I got there I can't get into the apartment I was looking for some information to get to the apartment but there's no information so I had to call the host and finally find the host and host is like oh I I haven't done where BNB for a while like my room it's not available so that mess up my whole trip there it

10:12 was very hard to find another no room immediately at that moment we already got there and I had to change all my plans okay and sometimes the key doesn't work or the password doesn't work they you have to like contact customer service or host to get that right uring stay there multiple things can be wrong like you find you finally got this place but then you find out oh the place doesn't look as nice as what it is

10:43 advertised adverti the picture always Nether and you might some find some of the supplies or equipment not working like maybe the refrigerator is not working that can be a big problem or the toilet is not flashing yeah that that's annoying and the since Airbnb is not the same as a hotel they they have people cleaning but it might not be that as professional cleaning as a hotel so people sometime people complain this is

11:13 the place is not that clean and depends on location some of the locations since you was the first time you got there you might feel like neighborhood that not that safe it can it's a new place for you and if something looks kind of scary the neighborhood you might feel like I don't want to go out you kind of just want to stay there and you're concerned about the safety issue and safety concern can be another saying that when you share

11:41 the place with other people some people BBB to share the place with the host or other roomies who are traveling you don't know them it's it's the first time everybody meet right you don't know who are who they are what they do and your door might not be that secure might might be not cannot be security locked right so you might be concerned though my stuff being stolen

12:12 or or it can happen to somebody maybe they stuff really got stolen or or damaged by other people and some sometimes you do have to like contact a host for something they can it's there's no like direct like so there's no guarantee they will response and most of time they the host left all the kind of papers about all the instructions in the room but if you

12:43 need help so they it can be like frustrated when the host are not responding and yeah another extreme example can be dangerous accident like there's a fire there's a gas leak happening in the house yeah that that that can really make up your TR now pretty extreme okay but yeah worse experiences that would make the news yeah yeah and last one bad bad

13:14 customer service like it can be you have some issues but you try to find customer service to help but it's not working U that's also bad experience I also list a couple here to for the host before we go par ize them I quickly talk about that U for the host I think host booking experience means they already have their places set up there so I'm not going to talk about that I can think of two is

13:41 one is the customers make some damage to the house it can be a small a damage for some small items but it can be big damages as well and another issue is like check out if the previous customer check out late and then you don't have that much cleaning time and then it might mess up your next guest to check in time you might leave bad Impressions or bad reviews about because of that yeah any question here before

14:15 we go prioritization oh you were really exhaustive and spoke to a lot of my experiences that have happened once or twice amazing so I'll have you prioritize maybe instead of going through the whole list just for time what maybe feels like the top three and then within the top three talk me through how you're thinking about the yeah and feel free to sound good 30 seconds or a minute yeah okay and give me one minute to think about that

14:44 there's many pain points here first of all I would like to talk about

15:15 my criteria that I prioritize them I would like to prioritize them by pain level how painful it is the impact on the Matrix which we picked before was number of nights work and the the frequency how often it happens and I rate them like by low media low media High for each of them since we don't have a time to go through all those I quickly went through all the

15:47 list here and I would like to talk about this three as my top three problem that I think they are the reason I picked this three is no I think they are the based on this criterias there's more painful ones that can happen so we're going to talk about one by one so more no room available that's very painful I think that's the highest pain Point

16:18 here you don't have a place to stay right of all the pain points here would rate this one as the highest pain Point others you you kind of have you have a place to stay it's just something is not working but this one has the biggest pain you don't have a p room and you if you go book a room right now to go some other places you might don't have a place like f immediately or

16:42 it can be extremely expensive if you book last a minute right so I think that's a biggest pain Point here and this no key or password this kind this one is painful because you might not be able to get in but why I read media is because normally you can't find a way to solve that problem like you can contact the host or customer service to to get that problem solved it might take some time but eventually I believe it

17:12 should be solved and place is not clean it's kind of annoying you want to have a nice places it's painful everybody I think everyone prefer prefers like a nice place but I would say this compar with all of all the paint point he's kind of not that high as a pain Point here and then thinking what about all the safety concerns those also feel like there's a potential that could lead to you have a

17:44 room but it's not really stable like whether it's a dangerous accident it's not safe yeah yeah I think about the safety I was think that I would rate them like media for maybe the pain level similar as a place is not clean because you it's it's you you have that PL you have that concern but it's not like bad things is GNA happen to you for sure like you have that plan

18:15 you have a place to stay you feel kind of neighborhood is not safe but it's not like a bad thing is going to happen on you it might still be fun but you might have that concern so it blocks you prevent you coming back to Airbnb to book again so I would rate the impact on Matrix as media but frequency wise I would also rate it kind of like a media Wise It's not or maybe or I would say

18:43 low maybe low or media it's not that frequent like you find a place that that bad normally you will like stay at a place that you reviewed it before you think it's good place to stay so I don't think it's that big surprise normally that happens oh I book this place and then the place it totally seems like such a bad neighborhood something like that yeah most look at that

19:15 beforehand so they know whether they are booking a place that's safe or not safe yeah they kind of have that expectation already if they choose a kind of maybe a area like that maybe cheaper or for some other reason they stay there and so another one is the impact on the Matrix like how bad it will impact the knights number of nights booked I rate there no room available as the highest because this is the direct impact like

19:46 if I don't have a room available right now then it does not count as one of the nights booked and stay right that's the number one thing we want we are looking at and also it will prevent again coming back to Airbnb and book another trip again like you don't trust A&B anymore you think oh I book there and I go there there's no room available and next time when you go travel again I don't think you're GNA choose

20:12 the Airbnb say oh I want stay there that's like I think that's the highest pain points there that's the highest impact on the number of nights booked okay in others I think this one I kind of rate it Media or maybe can be high that unless this password is totally not working you can't figure out the the right way to get into the house and then it does not count as number of nights State books and State but

20:42 if if it works somehow you eventually get that work you still can stay this time but you might be feeling like oh so much work to check in next time I might don't stay I might don't choose Airbnb so I kind of rate it as mediate impact on the future on number of nights booked and for others place is not clean I think it depend and place is not safe depends on you know how bad it is how

21:10 bad the cleanness situation is if it's some l a little bit not clean you're picky about it you might still feel okay you can still you might still choose Airbnb next time but if it's so bad you you might not choose mbnb next time so so kind of kind of balance it out feel like a media my third criteria is frequency but I would maybe way to Less in this problem because we are talking about the worst post booking

21:43 experience I was think like the room no room available it probably happen not that often so I rate it as low but this the maybe let's say overall there's only 1% of users have that problem but the overall 1% user can be still a large amount of user because airb has a large User Group so I would wait less of overall

22:14 criterias So based on that I would think if I only pick one of the pay points there of for the guest side I will probably I will still pick this no room available as my the worst supposed book experience that can happen because it has the biggest pain level has and has the biggest impact on the Matrix and number of nights book even though it happens less frequency but it's still a large user group that we should still

22:41 focus on that okay that make sense to you di yeah that makes sense the rationale was very thorough yeah we we didn't get to prioritize the hosts what do we think how do we think they measure up on the criteria that you shared yeah so for the two pain points here I I didn't mention them in my top three pain points overall I kind of feel like this like for example the damage thing I kind of feel like it's

23:12 maybe media like kind of paino level because it and it depends on how bad the damage if it's kind of small damage they can still fix it the host will probably still put their places on Airbnb unless it's like such it's a very bad kind of damage and then they can't they they were like so frustrated about Airbnb users but most users are not I don't

23:44 think that will be that bad normally and also the frequency will be pretty low so so I didn't pick this as my top pain points and a later check out it can be a sometimes it can be okay because you might don't have the second day booked you you still have the time to clean it up or sometime it might have some impact like mess up your schedule that you have to quickly clean

24:15 up for the next guess but I don't think overall it's that painful maybe the pain level I will rate it like low or media depend on the situation and then I don't think that will prevent the host to continue post post there placees on Airbnb right it's just a lat check out they think that user has a problem they don't think it's that bad normally they they don't think that bad to continue

24:47 renting their places on amnb so I think maybe and the frequency maybe low or medium so that's why I didn't mention them as my top three you pain points all right let's go to solutions for no room available so yeah yeah take a sec okay let me let me get give me 30 second to think about Solutions all right sounds good

25:34 ready I got a couple options here couple ideas here and I just wanted to reiterate the pain so no room available it's those cases when you had booked something and thought it was available but it ended up not being available when you showed up or something like that yeah when you showed up you found out there's no room there's no place for you to stay that day so it's very big bad experience it's kind of the biggest

26:00 paino so I was think those Solutions here I was thinking kind of I kind of buet them into two bucket one is how to can of prevent that happening another bucket is when it really happens what we do because you can't make everything perfect right but then if you can make up for it user can still be happy and they might still choose airb like oh they're customer survey is so good I can I I I feel like am even

26:32 though that happens right so to prevent happens I have one idea here is based on my personal experience the post was not active on airb somehow he didn't remove the listing there and I can still book it so I think there it can be some the regular check we can check if based on some M like you we can use machine learning to check some the host if that active or inactive like does this host have any conversation

27:03 with with customers in the last mon is there anything change any editing based on all those things we can see if this host is active or inactive host and if we Define some inactive post we can delete those listing so prevent that happening maybe oh I also think another one like to prevent that happening like also have that like what what we call confirmation check with the guest like you book that what I mean is you the host the

27:36 guest book that place you make that reservation but like me I never know or I never look it up say if this is I got confirmation or something like that so there can be some reminder or confirmation sent from Airbnb just say hey you book that place do you want but there's no confirmation or there seems something wrong like you want to double check or something like that if the host has not been responding for a

28:08 while and then Airbnb can send that confirmation or reminder to to the guest to prevent that happening okay and so that's my first budget a second buet when it happens what can we do I I have couple ideas here first one I think it's like you don't have a place to stay right now you have to find another place to stay and you are a BNB you should have other Airbnb places to stay so you there guest should have priority to you

28:38 know like a book a place nearby that for sure you guarantee that places you find some places nice nearby even though maybe cost a higher price but Airbnb should cover that cost or something like that for the for the people for the guest and then another place is another idea is if we don't have enough Airbnb places nearby in this location let's say we're in a location that's not that many listings it can be we

29:11 partner with hotels like they should hotels normally has more options that that you offer them free hotels at staying at this places and that can be partnership with some you know Hotel chain so make sure you got a good variety of Hotel options so you guests can choose where they want they they want to stay another one here kind of may be fun to try that partner with

29:42 RVs or camping vents because the people who are booking Airbnb they a lot of them are kind of adventur spirit they have their they want to experience different places like if they you off offer them RVs or camping vans that total different experience but fun and unique they might end up like wow oh Airbnb is so fun like and it's interesting so they might have that

30:13 toally change their their meds side of Airbnb with that no room available and then to something like this is fun so I think that's something also Airbnb can try or they can try something like I know they're trying doing something like called icon that Airbnb own the places they make that places a very unique experience and they build the houses like that a totally different experience the idea here is similar they offer something very cool unique

30:46 to the guests with priority like they you have to offer them a places so yeah any questions here di yeah no no questions I like the preventative versus kind of post they're bound to happen no matter how much we try to prevent them solid list of solutions okay let's leave it amazing awesome thank you for going through this question again there's not much information out there for you folks

31:16 that are going to be interviewing with door Dash so Yun provided one what was Stellar about this interview was the structure right not only did she walk us through the structure in the beginning but in each section it was very clear clear what her decision criteria was going to be upfront even for the solutions she said we have preventative versus post if this happens Solutions so just throughout is very very easy to follow the second thing that's thank you

31:43 yeah the second thing that stood out was your user empathy as we went through the story and the pain points you talked about your Maui trip you talked about how frustrating it would be for certain guests and you use that to prioritize as well so that was really helpful to show to Door Dash that you can get into the shoes of a user and thoroughly feel their pain to be that Allstar pm to predict the pain of these potential

32:10 customers ahead of time and to solve for that and to yeah have the the company take responsibility for that because what they're going to be doing is in by doing that for example you had the solution of oh booking them another Airbnb on the air BB's cost right this is a way to show that companies are investing in these customers long term yeah yeah yeah so amazing work Yun thank youate this any last words than for the

32:42 guest no I think I think I had great experience with Diana I really appreciate her Insight that was very helpful and I hope everyone can find it this helpful as well to make make your job hunting Journey a little bit easier yes it's going to be one of the few videos online on door Dash interviews so don't worry they'll come fine to you thank you all hope you guys enjoyed it thank you everyone bye