How would you improve shopping experience via Alexa? — PM Question

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Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash

Interviewer: How would you improve the shopping experience via Alexa?

Shailesh: Okay, before that, let me clarify my understanding of Alexa so that we are on the same page. Alexa is a virtual voice assistant that helps people seamlessly organise their lives by getting the information from the web, adding items to the Amazon shopping cart, or helping with home automation. Is the broad understanding of Alexa correct?
Interviewer: Yes, that’s okay.

Shailesh: Okay, now I have some questions that I want to clarify; my first question is, what is the objective of improvement? As per my understanding of the question, we are trying to improve the user experience and make it more engaging, want to increase the cart value, or reduce the time taken by an individual to buy the item. Is that correct?
Interviewer: Yes, correct. We can go ahead with this goal of reducing the time taken by the user to buy the item on amazon.

Shailesh: Alright, are we focusing on a particular segment of users like people without disability can be one segment, blind people can be other etc. For this question, I think we can focus on the people without any disability because this is the segment in which we can have maximum impact.
Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Shailesh: Since we are improving the shopping experience for the future, I can use the future technology in the developing or nascent stage.
Interviewer: yes, you can.

Shailesh: One last question, is there any time or resource constraint should I be aware of?
Interviewer: No, you are not bound by that.

Shailesh: Alright, let me quickly form a goal from whatever we have discussed till now. The objective of the problem is to increase the shopping experience(Reducing the time taken by the users to shop) of the user without any disability via Alexa, and any resource and time constraints do not bind us.
Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Shailesh: Okay, the way I would like to approach this problem is; first, we can think of the potential customer segment and then see the user journey of the prioritized user segment. After that, we can think of their pain points and prioritize them. From there will go on the solution and prioritize the solution for the MVP. At last, we can think of some of the metrics to track whether our solution is actually useful or not. We can also think of some of the future vision and technology of the product. Is that sound okay to you?
Interviewer: Sounds great.

Shailesh: There can be multiple personas who use Alexa for the shopping experience, but if I have to choose to put them in the MECE way, I have the following user personas for buyers

USER PERSONA

  1. The first persona I can personally relate to is the people who exactly know what they are going to buy. They may be busy individuals or those who don’t do much cost-benefit analysis. They don’t fear post buying regret or stress.
  2. The second persona is the one who takes a lot of time before buying any product; they search for reviews on Youtube and blogs, ask friends and then only they will buy the product. They know what to buy but don’t know about the brands etc.
  3. The third persona is the one who neither knows what to buy nor knows about brands; they do impulse buying or do window shopping on Amazon.

Shailesh: If I have to select one persona, I will go after the second persona because they are the ones who know what to buy, but they take a lot of time reviewing blogs, videos etc. IF we put these personas on the bell curve, they are the ones who will acquire more area, so solving problems for them would create a bigger impact. What do you think?
Interviewer: yes, that makes sense; go ahead.

Shailesh: Now, let’s see the user journey of the second person so that we can come up with the different pain points.

USER JOURNEY OF PRIORITIZED PERSONA

  1. They got the need for something; they look for the item to buy on the internet, ask friends, family etc.
  2. Sometimes when they find the same item from a different brand, they become unsure of whether to buy it or not.
  3. Sometimes the price of the item becomes more; in that case, they either don’t buy or search for some alternative.
  4. Then they read the reviews and comments, ask friends, send photos to friends and seek their approval.
  5. After seeking a lot of validations, you add to the cart, apply coupons and buy the product.
  6. They keep track of the delivery status of the product.
  7. Finally, they get the product from the delivery executive.

Shailesh: Seeing the user journey, now let’s look for the pain points.

PAIN POINTS OF USER SEGMENT

  1. Sometimes searching for the thing is pain; you have seen it somewhere but cannot search.
  2. Checking multiple things like reviews, ratings of the seller, comparisons with the other product is painful; seeking validation from friends is too time-consuming.
  3. If you cannot find it or are too costly, you become distraught.

PRIORITIZATION OF PAIN POINTS

Shailesh: Okay, now let me prioritise the pain points depending on the intensity of grievance, or we can also think of the frequency of pain points if that is applicable here. So that we have looked to the complete breadth and depth of the pain points, is that okay?
Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Shailesh: I think the pain point second is the one that takes so much time; solving that pain point will make a greater impact. What do you think? 
Interviewer: okay

Shailesh: Let me pause for a while; if you have any questions, we can discuss them.
Interviewer: Please go ahead.

Shailesh: Now, let’s see the different solutions to the pain points.

SOLUTIONS/FEATURES

  1. Alexa can help us give a crisp summary of the product and can recommend as “Go” and “No Go” depending on the rating of the product, seller, reviews of users, reviews from the blog and the Youtube comments and also tell us about what are the things which people find good and bad.
  2. Alexa can compare the products, give the point of difference and similarities, and give smart recommendations of what to buy and what not to buy.
  3. Alexa can help us with real-time time feedback from family members, friends etc. For example, in my command like “Get me reviews from XYZ about this product”, Alexa will send a voice note and the link and ask the other person about the product and get the review in real-time.
  4. Amazon has Amazon fresh, and we can also send gift cards to our friends. So We can integrate the Alexa into our refrigerator and recommend what needs to buy. We just have to tell the dish we want to prepare in the upcoming days. It automatically checks the refrigerator’s availability and tells us if some core vegetable/fruits/dairy product is missing.
  5. Alexa can be integrated with our calendar and suggest smart recommendations of necessary items like clothes etc., for upcoming trips or vacations.

PRIORITISATION OF SOLUTIONS

Shailesh: Let’s prioritize the solutions depending on our objective, effort required and impact it will create. I think solutions #1 and #2 will decrease the conversion time by a huge margin. I would like to have this solution in our future release.
Shailesh: Now, let’s define some of the success metrics

SUCCESS METRICS

  1. Increase in the average lifetime value of the customer.
  2. Decrease in the average conversion time per user.
  3. Increase in the average no. of voice searches to Alexa per day.
  4. Increase in the average no. of product comparison by Alexa per day.

-- Technomanagers

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