THE PM SCOOP | CASES

THE PM SCOOP
CASES

By
Product Management &
Technology Club, IIM Calcutta
Product Design Case
Design a CRM Tool for logistic solutions company

Disclaimer:
The aim of this case is to familiarize the reader with use cases of a CRM tool and the working model of a tech
based logistic solutions company. Multiple needs of the user have been addressed in this case whereas in an
actual interview it is advised to delve deep into only one or two needs and the prioritization and trade-offs
will change accordingly. The framework has been used implicitly to demonstrate how it can be implemented
without mentioning each step.

Background
A logistic solution firm can be any firm that provide services like the management of freight, warehousing
and inventory management to other businesses. They often have to deal with a variety of clients and end
consumers. Their demand side clients can range from large B2B business including e commerce giants to
small scale distributors. On the supply side they can have clients who own the transportation fleets,
individual owners and drivers. Internally also they have consumers who use the platform during their jobs.
While the firms have very elaborated and comprehensive platform for the demand side clients, the supply
side clients are often ignored even though the success of the services largely depend on the ground workers
which are the supply side client.

The operations of the firm for the supply side occur in following manner:

1. On receiving a delivery order, a notification goes to the driver. The order information contains
inventory amount, location, delivery location, pitstops, route, handover point if any, total money
needed for the trip which includes driver meals, repair work, toll amount, etc.

2. The money needed is digitally transferred to the driver’s account.

3. At each point of the journey, the driver has to update certain fields and complete some tasks on the
app.

• Update and confirm inventory pick up

• Update inventory checks and truck condition report at handover point

• Register complaint on app if company owned truck needs repair

• Update unexpected delays

• Upload receipts for expenses

• Receive payment post order fulfilment

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Case

Assumptions
This case is an attempt to design a CRM tool for the supply side clients. An important aspect to note here is
that the tool will not be directly used by supply side clients but by the employees of the logistic solutions
company to manage these clients. For the sake of simplicity, we will make some assumptions about the firm
operations. First assumption is the company is primarily into transport solutions via trucking for which it either
uses its own trucks or connects demand and supply on its marketplace. The case assumes that the logistics
firm has only two types of clients on the supply side. 1. Truck drivers who drive company owned trucks 2.
Truck/Fleet owners who lease their services on individual contract basis. The consumer for this CRM tools will
be customer service personnel, operations team, etc. who deal with these clients.

We will start constructing the solution by discussing why the firm needs this CRM tool and what are its use
cases. CRM tool will be primarily used by the operations team and customer service team. While all the
above-mentioned processes will be automated for an order, CRM tools will be useful in addressing the
grievances of drivers and fleet owners, manual status checks and auditing purposes aimed at increasing
overall efficiency, reduce manual work and provide a one stop grievance management system for supply side
clients.

Identifying Customers:

We will focus on customer service representatives of our users for this case since they are the primary users
of the CRM tools and are the first touch point for the clients. So, the use cases for CRM tools are as follows:

• Dashboard for order details: Demand side clients might ask for direct personal reports, register
complaints about orders, request for shipment status and ETAs.

• Client complaints portal: The supply side ground workers will face roadblocks like vehicle
breakdowns, inventory issues, damaged inventory/ truck being handed over while carrying out the
delivery. The customer service team should be able to see the issues and guide them through the
process. They will also need to educate the clients and guide them through the process of complaint
registration and redressal.

• Billing and salary management: Verify and approve expenses uploaded by drivers. Disburse or
deduct excess amount spent/saved

• Inventory and asset tracking: Track location of trucks, inventory real time.

Deciding which problems to address:

Amongst the given use cases, the customer complaints portal is the most important use case for the customer
service representatives who are the primary users we have chosen.

Features: We can divide the features into two parts. First set of features will consist of generic CRM related
features that every tool should have. These features have been listed here but not discussed in details.
Second set of features will be specifically designed to cater to the needs of the clients.

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Generic features for CRM:

• Contact management

• Interaction tracking

• Lead management

• Document management

• Quotes/proposal management

• Pipeline management

• Workflow automation

• Analytics and data management tools

Specific Features for client complaints portal

• Training guide and assistance: Since most of the truck drivers have low levels of literacy, they
struggle through the usage of the app.

1. Simulated GUI guide: The workflow for every actionable sequence on the app will be
embedded in the tool. The customer service guide will be able to see data filled by the app
user in a simulated app UI. Based on the customer query or complaint, the guide can direct
the user to help them complete the actions or complete them on their behalf.

2. Chat-bot: A chatbot can be created to answer FAQs, register complaints, get in touch with
operations teams, report delay, etc. If the issue cannot be listed using any of existing
mechanisms, the user will be connected to a real customer service representative.

3. Native Language Support: Language barrier might be a major issue for drivers and fleet
owners, so a basic FAQ will be present in the native language of the driver. He can also click
on call for help button there to connect with a customer service representative who speaks
that language.

• Query and Escalation mechanism:

1. Escalation score: A weighted system to calculate urgency score based on order size, delivery
deadline, type of issue and assign the ticket to appropriate team on single click.

2. A ticket management system with status and actionable buttons to request for update from
driver and the concerning team in the firm.

• Vehicle breakdown guide:

1. Nearest Service Station: The firms usually have partnership with vehicle service stations so
that the drivers can repair the company vehicles there and there is no exaggeration in
reporting which leads to higher cost to the company. Also, companies can directly transact
with the service station and thus eliminate the need to transfer ad hoc amounts into driver

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 accounts which they may or may not be able to cash out in emergency. So, the customer
service representative will see the location of the truck on his dashboard and the complaint
ticket that was raised by the driver. He will also be able to see nearest service stations to the
location on the same map. The customer service agent can drag the ticket from truck to
station on map to assign the repair job to that service station.

2. In case any partner stations are not available in vicinity, arrange for a tow/repair team on
location using a database and provide an option to call and negotiate on behalf of the driver.

Prioritising Features:

To prioritize between the listed features, we rate out of 10 the features based on the following parameters.

• Impact on company profit (Savings on cost)

• Ease of business with clients

• Ease of implementation

Feature Impact on Ease of business with Ease of Total

profit clients implementation Score

Simulated GUI Guide 4 8 8 16

Chat Bot 0 9 5 14

Native language support 0 8 4 12

Query and Escalation 0 7 8 15

mechanism

Nearest Service Station 9 6 5 20

Based on our assessment we will go ahead with the Nearest Service Station feature first. While this feature
will result in standardization of the repair process and save company costs incurred during the repairs, but it
will also increase the average repair time since the drivers will only be able to connect with the listed garages.
This will lead to higher TAT for delivery. Also, this feature is difficult to implement since we have external
dependencies on the garages and will need to be onboarded as clients for the company.

Once we have decided the set of features, we need to decide metrics that we can measure so that we can
gauge the success of that feature, work on shortcoming in the following iteration and calculate ROI.

• % Complaints successfully solved

• % reduction in asset/inventory damage

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 • Reduction in mean time for addressing complaints

• %Reduction in average ticket size for vehicle repairs

• %Reduction in average TAT for a source-destination pair

So, the CRM tool will reduce overall error from the system, increase efficiency and make it easier for firm to
track the ground level activities. The features have to be specific to solve the issues faced by clients. A unique
aspect of this case was that most of the pain points were not of the end consumers of the tool but of end
consumer/client of the overall business.

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Design a Cooking Assistant to be embedded in Alexa/Echo
Clarification

A cooking assistant embedded in Alexa/Echo shall help the person cooking with voice instructions. In our
analysis, we assume the video access on the device is not available.

Problem Statement

The approach changes based on the target we choose. The aim of the problem could be customer acquisition,
contribution to revenue, or increase in device sales.

This is a new feature being introduced to customers with not many direct parallels. We are considering customer
acquisition as the primary aim.

Identify Customers

The target customer should be chosen based on the target's need (do they actually need it) and the size of the
customer base (because the case is for customer acquisition).

The potential customers for this feature can be all the people who cook. Considering the current context of
Indian society, they may include -

1. Chefs - This segment is expert at cooking and already knows most of the recipes. They might also have
to comply with their respective restaurant’s standardization demands, thus an inhibition to checkout
recipes online from different sources.
2. Amateurs - Many bachelors try cooking at times as a fun/necessity based activity. Covid-19 has
increased this segment size a lot. They completely depend upon online recipes or cookbooks to guide
them for cooking. However, at times they do not understand the process just by reading the instructions.
They need to check the video or illustrations during the cooking process to validate if they are doing
right.
3. Homemakers and people who enjoy cooking in general - This segment knows to cook well and can
execute recipes just by reading/listening to them. They are also always looking out on the web for new
recipes to try.

Given the segment understanding, chefs are a small customer base with a low need for this feature, amateurs
are a better customer base but only audio instructions may not be enough for them and thus these two segments
should not be our target. Homemakers and people who enjoy cooking are a large customer base with the
capability to effectively utilize the feature in consideration. We should target this segment.

Customer Needs (for the chosen segment)

Homemakers (Housewives/Househusbands) are experts in cooking. They know how to cook, how the
ingredients are to be added, and what goes after what. They have the following needs-

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 1. They have a certain set of recipes that repeat many times. They explore the web to find new recipes
that they can make with the ingredients they have.

2. For new recipes, listening to some specific steps of the recipe shall be enough to execute the whole.
They would not want to listen to everything from start to end.

3. At times, they have to prepare food for many people at once. Instructions customized to serving size
should be of use.

4. They would also like to listen to music or radio while cooking.

Prioritize the needs

We are going to prioritize the customer needs by measuring their Reach, Impact, and Effort.

Needs Reach(/10) Impact(/10) Effort*(/10) Total

Explore new recipes 6 6 6 18

Listen to recipes 8 8 5 21

Customized recipes 4 6 6 16

Listen to music 6 6 8 20

*Effort (The higher the easier)

Based on the above parameters, we choose to create a solution for listening to the recipes.

Solutions

The solution is a step-by-step cooking instructor which explains the recipe and goes at the pace that the user
wants.
Salient features of the solution are

1. User should be able to skip to the next n steps or repeat the last n steps using voice commands.

2. User should be able to ask questions regarding quantity and time to the assistant E.g. How much sugar?
Till when should I stir?

3. User should be able to set a timer using voice commands

4. User should be able to start and stop the recipe instruction at any time.

5. User should be able to jump to a step by calling out the title. Eg - Jump to marinating

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This solution helps the user understand the recipe while cooking and is flexible enough to jump to the required
step.

Trade Offs

Pros

1. It provides flexibility to skip or repeat any step by step number and title.

2. It provides steps in a detailed format to the user.

3. It provides hands-free experience to the user

Cons

1. The user might forget the title or step number

2. Understanding the colour of ingredients or dish, even after listening, will be difficult

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Pricing Strategy Brief:
Pricing depends on the following parameters –

1. Strategy

• Aggressive – Attack the competition and steal the market share

• Passive – Maintain the status quo

2. Business Goal

• Increase market share – Lower price

• Increase profit – Higher price

3. Product Differentiation
• Highly differentiated product can have higher prices. Eg. iPhone
• A product which is commoditized or has no exceptional features will fail if the prices are kept
extremely high

4. Market Condition

• Market is still in emerging state – Value based pricing. Eg. Folding phones
• Market is growing or in mature state – Pricing depends on business goals and product
differentiation

5. Cost Advantage

• If the company has cost advantages i.e. company acquired resources cheaper than competitors,
then company can keep a lower price
• Without cost advantage, if the company keeps lower prices, it is affecting its bottom-line.

6. Risks
• How will competitors respond?
Samsung and other companies started providing cheaper phones with loaded features to tackle
Oppo, Xiaomi and other Chinese companies.
• How will customers perceive it? Does the price justify the company’s portfolio?
Consumers will be sceptical of Apple if they start selling phones at Xiaomi prices.
• Is it feasible to justify premium prices for differentiation?
After a point of time, any kind of differentiation wanes off, if not renewed. Thus, the premium
prices cannot be justified for longer periods.

The above parameters are not exhaustive but are critical in deciding the price. In some cases, only few of
these parameters might help.

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Product Pricing Case
Analysing the Pricing of Netflix Subscription Model
What is the business goal of Netflix?

Netflix Inc.’s corporate vision is “To continue being one of the leading firms of the internet entertainment
era.” This highlights the company’s strategic objective of being at the top of the competition. Netflix’s
corporate vision has the following main points:

1. Continuing leadership

2. Internet

3. Entertainment

Increasing user engagement and giving customers value for their money is their core strategy.

Who are the customers for Netflix?

Anyone who is interested in watching movies, TV shows and documentaries.

Although Netflix offers content for children and adults alike, it targets the non-committal younger crowd who
like to watch on demand!

What are the customers’ needs?

1. Kids & Toddlers: Watch cartoons - Parents are the deciding factors here. Watches on whatever devices
parents have.

2. High School Kids: Get pocket money to pay. Most probably use phones to watch popular shows.

3. College going: Watch a lot, have a little bit higher propensity to pay. Will use a laptop or phone. Are ready
to increase their viewing options and try new content.

4. Mid/Low-income adults: Just want to access content, no preference of device - most probably phones.

5. Affluent Family/Adults: Earning well but still seeking value. Will stream content post work or while
traveling. Limited time to watch shows but need good quality content. May have many devices including
TVs capable of streaming OTTs.

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What is the current model applied by Netflix?

Looking at the above segments with each using a different number of devices, watching different types and
amount of content, Netflix has been right in applying a tier-based pricing strategy with variations in the number
of devices and type of content.

Subscriptions offer the following to the customers:

• Provide both flexibility and control

• Offer good value for money

• Create an excellent user experience

• Make them feel like a valued or VIP customer

• Fits their lifestyle, needs, and budgets

Netflix applies the subscription model whereby giving the customers a choice in purchase based on the tier
they want.

It has 4 packages as shown below:

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Who are its competitors?

Amazon Prime, Disney + HotStar, Zee5, SonyLiv, Voot

What are the differentiators for Netflix?

Strengths:

• Highest rated content among all platforms, mainly meant for the urban consumer.
• Allows simultaneous streaming on up to 4 devices.
• Original content: Netflix Originals such as Money Heist, Stranger Things, Sacred Games etc., have
been produced by Netflix in-house by keeping the target audience in mind.
• Ad-free experience

Weaknesses:

• Lack of regional content - With increasing affordability of the internet, a majority of Indian OTT
viewers are now emerging from Tier-⅔ cities. The most popular content among them are not the
award-winning International shows but it’s content in regional languages instead. While competitors
like Zee5 and Amazon Prime are increasing their market share by adopting the same, Netflix is far
behind in this aspect. In fact, as of February 2020, Zee5 offered 4 times the number of movies on
Netflix thanks to its regional language leverage.
• Adaptive video quality: While the quality of videos offered by Netflix increases with the subscription
pack you choose, platforms such as Disney+Hotstar and Amazon Prime allow a user to stream at the
highest quality possible for any subscription. The video quality also adjusts automatically according to
the bandwidth. The latter, in a way, is a more useful option for the Indian consumer.
• TV channel streaming: While Netflix is essentially an OTT, its homegrown rivals Zee5 and HotStar
on the other hand, have emerged from the traditional cable TV channels. Hence, these platforms also
allow its users to stream their channels at their convenience. Hence, greatly improving their content
and user base.

Verdict: While the content of Netflix is curated for the trendy urban consumer, its weaknesses as mentioned
above can be a hindrance to increasing its reach into Tier-⅔ cities, where a majority of the Indian OTT
viewers reside. Additionally, with its competitors pricing their subscriptions at INR 99/month (Zee5), INR
129/month (Prime) etc., Netflix’s subscription price of INR 200-800/month can be a barrier to adoption. Hence,
a lower price might be required.

What is the Pricing Strategy followed by Netflix?

Netflix has been following more of a Value based pricing strategy where pricing power is an output that you
can measure based on how much value you deliver to customers relative to alternatives on the market.

The company offers its subscribers a variety of price tiers. Hence, they can choose the tier they want. It offers
more value at the higher-priced and middle tiers. The company expects to increase its ASP (Average Selling
Price) over time and hopes to deliver more value to its subscribers for the price.

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Netflix has three categories of content:

1. Licensed, 2nd-run

2. Licensed, Original

3. Self-produced, Original

It keeps adding more content to its portfolio and has upscaled the process by creating self produced original
content. It tries to differentiate itself from the other streaming services through this fresh content which is
carefully curated based on the user’s choice of content.

Recommendations for the current model:

Netflix’s competitive strategies have mainly been rooted in content innovation and revolved around
perfecting their recommendation and personalization engine. As the first mover in the category, Netflix has a
sea of data about consumers’ preferences, ratings, watch habits, watch lists and taste regimes. But as
competition is gearing up, it faces many difficulties.

Although, the presence of Netflix in India has increased after the COVID lockdown, it is experiencing tough
competition. The clash of colossal competitors and strategic joust of big brands in the streaming content
category is often referred to as the “streaming wars.”

Consumers already have preferences and tastes built around Disney’s content. They come to the platform
with favourites, memories and expectations, preferences in language.

While Netflix prefers playing the content war, with competitors such as Zee 5 and HotStar emerging from
traditional cable TV channels, they have the potential to cater to a majority of the Indian crowd. Based on the
changing consumer behaviour and the options available, Netflix should consider introducing more regional
content in India.

Customers in India are also very price conscious and although Netflix has introduced the mobile pack, it is still
expensive relative to the substitute content available on other platforms. It can reduce its prices to a range of
300-500(4 screens + UltraHD) per month if they aim to acquire more customers in the Indian Market.

Note: While in an interview, it is usually difficult to quote an exact price given the limited amount of data. In
such a scenario, providing a range is recommended. Also, a candidate’s quality of justification is usually given
more importance than the final number.

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How will you price Apple Watch?
What is the business goal and what is the market conditions?

The smartwatch market is in growing stage. Fossil, Samsung, Fitbit are the few of the competitors. The
business goal can be a defensive strategy because a cheaper price does not suit Apple’s portfolio.

Can you charge premium for a differentiated product?

Apple Smartwatch is a differentiated product. It has better features than the competitors. Its integration with
iOS is unique. Thus, Apple can charge a premium.

What are the associated risks?

Apple has a brand perception of premium and high-quality products. Thus, a premium price suits the product
portfolio. Competitors cannot increase the price till they match the quality of features.

Thus, my suggestion is – If Fitbit, Samsung are pricing the watches around 20,000-35,0000, I think Apple can
charge the consumers somewhere around 40,000 – 50,0000.

The risk with this price is –

1. Apple can only target the upper class of market

Once the competitors catch up to the quality of its sensor and features, the high price of Apple watch might
turn against it.

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Root Cause Analysis
Drop-in sales of Samsung model X (Mobile) on Flipkart during a
particular month

Clarifications

Candidate: By sales drop, are we referring to a drop in revenue or drop in the number of units sold?

Interviewer: Let’s consider a drop in the number of units sold

Candidate: Is the drop in sales observed only in a specific geographical location?

Interviewer: Yes, In India

Candidate: Is the trend limited to Tier I cities or relatively the same across Tier I, II and III cities

Interviewer: More prominent in the Tier I cities, but there was a considerable drop even in tier II and III
cities

Candidate: When was this phone model released in the Indian market?

Interviewer: Aug 2019, almost a year ago (13 months)

Candidate: Does this model fall under budget or premium?

Interviewer: Budget

Candidate: Is the percentage drop in-line with the trend followed by other models after 13 months from
launch? And is this drop the same across all budget phones?

Interviewer: Deviation in mean sales drop is higher as compared to general trends. Yes, the drop
seems to be consistent with other models from the same company

Candidate: Is the drop witnessed across all other mediums? Like Amazon, brick and mortar

Interviewer: Data from Samsung outlets and reflect the same, no data on amazon sales

Candidate: Is the trend witnessed only in this month or has this been a progressive development over the last
few months

Interviewer: The data from the last 2 months has shown a declining slope

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Notes

The first step when faced with a root cause analysis question is to first question to clarify the metrics being
considered with the interviewer. Once that has been established, the next set of questions is to ascertain the
geographical location, trend analysis, time frame during which the change in the metrics is witnessed to try
and isolate the problem. Follow up questions to rule out or confirm the possibility of the issue being an in-
house issue by collecting data on competitors, platform-specific outages etc.

In this case, the Candidate starts off by clarifying what the metrics in question mean to the interviewer to
confirm if the 2 are on the same page before diving into the solutioning. The Candidate then moves on to
understand geographical location followed by the time frame during which the metric was reported to have
shown a glitch. In this case, since the downward trend was being witnessed for the last 2 months, we can rule
out any possibility of it being a post-festive season/ discount sales slump/ variation. The candidate also tries to
understand if the drop is in line with the trend witnessed across all mobiles as the product ages to reaffirm that
the drop in this particular model is an anomaly. The candidate also follows up with a question to gauge
competitors’ performance around the same metric to try and isolate if the issue is universal or platform-
specific.

Establish a theory/Hypothesis of the probable cause:

Candidate:

Based on the information from the clarification questions, we can rule out the possibility of it being a Flipkart
specific platform issue.

We can think of the following cause that could be the reason:

1. There could have been recent reports of Samsung phones being defective, Look into any press
reports from the company or customer reviews from online platforms

2. Competitors in the budget range might be releasing better phones with better features

3. Samsung has announced the next variant in the model series, which has updated technology and
advanced features, price range may be the same or a little higher

4. Consumers purchase behaviour might be moving towards the premium segment

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