on
June19: Product Manager me at Nexchanges Technology
Product Management: How did you figure out a non-obvious customer insight, that led to a feature / initiative that most moved your company metrics. Be specific
Insight: We borrowed a simple one way scheduling without negotiation for site visits just like Uber/Calendly follows where the availability on a restricted region(geo/time) is marked as a resource ready for allocation. It was like a handshake in real time just like Uber hailing without the negotiation involved in a typical handshake (traditional yellow black) there by improving two things for both 1. seriousness of seller/buyer with the agent to see the property right now in 15min and 2. The trust of mapping the right agent hyper-locally with appropriate showings in the next 15min in the given locality. This. was done with a two sided mobile app only dashboard.
Improvement of Metrics
- Handshakes(post launch Mom matches(aka handshakes) between Agents<>Buyers/Sellers went up 2.5x from a base of 1500 improving late stage funnel metrics). We call them Oye-Ok pairs the name of the App. Our revenue went up by 1.5x for our partners and in turn for us. In real estate transactions fee that is a huge number given the size of operations and high value transaction business.
- 50% MoM - New demand side (word of mouth customers without any traceable marketing link on-boarded the platform as referrals as the platform looked trustworthy with high prioritised response)
- Relative activeness ranking of Agents created an automatic ranking filter for each locality [We could filter top 50 agents every Pincode and could send our operations team to engage them at next level]
Backdrop(At Nexchanges Technology)
Real Estate Exchange Price Index B2C Marketplace [Agents<>Buyers/Sellers).
Existing Behaviour:
Agents just like lawyers, doctors are super busy and strapped for time. Customers schedule showings but often with change in plans turn down showings ot get caught up in tight schedules/traffic leading to cascading delayed showings
Competitor Offerings
(i) Listings: Competitor platforms offered property listing replies without indicating the priority or seriousness of the buyer/seller thereby overwhelming them with whimsical inquiries. (ii) Phone Call Listings: Agents mostly operate on a self-proprietorship model hence the second model of listing mobile number overwhelms their mobile phones with calls without any screening.
Impact/Problem
Customers: This often lead to a poor experience for customers with no shows from agents or delayed showings and more so for vice versa Agents: with a hyper dynamic roster of site visits(showings) with 40-50% cancellation rates.
Pretend the PM intern at the startup you work at texts you “how do I know if I’m succeeding as a PM?” What’s your response? (Must fit within a few text messages / i.e. no more than 500 characters).
Brief (500 Chars)
“Invert, always Invert” Charlie Munger says when it comes to difficult problems. Instead of asking how do I succeed as a PM invert and write down how can I fail as a PM successfully. Eventually the responsibility is everybody understands the what & the why to move forward. Doing one on ones reiterating after team meetings to validate if each member on Product Vision, Outcomes, Goals & Metrics, RoadMap & Resources(Who on What?) has a common denominator understanding of at-least 75% with desired reality. Then the team is vectorised and you are at-least not failing as a PM (inversion)
Optional Reading : https://medium.com/@sagungarg/pm-role-how-do-i-know-if-im-succeeding-as-a-product-manager-6cf76f558983