 How would you improve Airbnb? How would you design the user experience for Airbnb users? Those are very typical interview questions in the product management interviews, especially for product design questions. However, most people do not understand what the best way to crack this case, even if we all have used Airbnb in the past. In this video, I'm gonna share with you the mock interview I had with one of my students on inside PMX server. And this is the very first time she conducted a mock interview with me, but I'm very impressed by her performance. That's why we decided to reveal this mock interview to public to make sure that everyone can use the free training we applied to today and learn your next dream PM job offer. All I wanna ask you is, share this video with any aspiring product managers and comment below once you learn a job offer because of our free resources. I also know hundreds of you guys already learned job offer but just by watching lots of YouTube videos of us. So make sure to like this video, subscribe and share this with any aspiring product managers. Hi, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a direct product and featured in Forbes. I help hundreds of people learn their dream PM job offer and thank companies at Unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. If you're interested in product management course, please go to PMX server.io to learn more. To learn the most effective way to become a product manager, you should subscribe to the channel turn the bell button to be notified every time I turn on the video every week. And they asked to improve Airbnb. How would you open the case? What would you say to me? I would first define what the company mission and goal is and then based on the current situation of the company plus the industry environment, then understanding what we're trying to solve here. And by going into the customer segmentation, understanding the two-sided marketplaces, all the different customer segmentations list everything out. After that, asking the interviewer if I have covered all the segmentations or covered everything in my answers. Very good, very good. Okay, so let's do a more interview starting from top. If you come into interview with me, what would you say to interviewer at the beginning and say, hey, Mimi, and today we're going to test your product sense. Can you help me to improve Airbnb? What would you say? Yes, for sure. I would love to do that. And first of all, let me talk about what the Airbnb mission and mission statement is. And then after defining the mission statement, then I ask if I have identified the correct statement and what exactly are we trying to improve here? Okay, so you are the product manager of Airbnb. You can't improve anything of Airbnb. So what do you think is a mission of Airbnb and why we're improving Airbnb? Okay, Airbnb is a marketplace for customers trying to list out their properties for rent or even for the experiences and then also for the travelers to be able to select and rent a property-specific location or the experience. So for them to share information back and forth on this one marketplace. Yeah, why do you think we need to improve it in today's case? Why we need to improve it? I guess, first of all, we need to find which customer segmentation we are focusing on and then what kind of issues or what kind of problems they're facing and then identify how urgent the problem is, the size of the market, et cetera. And also the risk involved in order to see what exactly we should, like which... I'm not saying how. I'm not saying how. Why do you think we need to improve Airbnb? Where the beginning of the case? Why we need to improve it? You need to comprehend the situation in an interview. So what you're saying... I guess right now, let's say, for example, under the COVID environment, there's a lot of safety concerns for customers by renting or going into these properties, wanting to know that they're protected or that safety would not be a concern for them. Very good, very good. Okay, so in an interview, I will say the following. I'll say, yeah, it's very interesting case regarding improving Airbnb. Based on what I understand regarding Airbnb, by the way, I Google Airbnb's mission. Even if you don't know, it's okay. You can say just what you said. Okay, so based on my understanding of Airbnb's mission, which is creating, making people feel like a creating experience will make people feel like they belong everywhere. So they can use Airbnb as a platform to find places to rent, create experience and exchange information with hosts and guests. So this is a perfect platform to achieve that mission. Of course, there's always room for improvement as we can imagine as we're just getting out of COVID. There is a surge of demand of people traveling, hasn't been traveled for two years and now Airbnb's design and customer experience has been the pre-COVID, but customers like demand and expectation have changed dramatically. So therefore, we need to think about a new way to meet the demand of customers. That's why, and then you follow this question you say. So that's what I believe, why we're working on this case. What I do next is I'm going to dive into the detail analysis regarding customer segmentations. I don't send any on my needs and then concrete the right product for customers. So before I move forward, is there anything I missed? That's it, completely. You say, then the interviewer will say, yes, let me tell you more or be like, nothing, yes, but you're on, to me, you're on the right track. Yes, we just need to improve it. Okay, and then we'll go to customer segmentation. Very good. Okay, so Mimi, what would you say in the interview? So for customer segmentations, I have divided into different categories. The first one host and then under host, I will list out, so the different hosts would be property owners who wants to be sharing the space with the renters. And then there'll be also property agents, so companies and also independent agents that are managing the properties. The investment property owners that are trying to gain a profit for renting out the properties and businesses such as hotels, conference spaces, they just want to rent out this open space. And then for the second customer segmentations I identified would be the experience providers. So under the experience category offered by Airbnb, we would, there will be day tours, excursions from these experience providers, also third party providers. The number of three would be guests. So the guests would be the largest customer segmentation, I believe, and then we'll have the travelers here, travelers usually for vacations and they may travel in families, solos, couples, and also a guest with disabilities and also guests staying with pets. Also under guests, we will have a short-term or long-term renters. So for example, if we have other, we have someone that wants to seek a job from, someone traveling from Thailand to US trying to seek a PM role and they may want to stay there for around 30 days trying to get that job. And then also have corporate gatherings and also weddings, parties, and then guests. Also the fourth customer segmentation, my last one would be property management service providers. That would be the cleaning services, booking services, concierge service, and also the insurance companies. Great, so for the guest customer segmentation did you segment it twice? Did you first talk about different type of guests? You talk about like people with disabilities or people going for leisure, people come with a group in terms of having families. And then you said for all of them they also have short-term, long-term rental. Do you, did you cut it twice? Did you do sub-segmentation twice? Yes, I did cut. So for the travelers, those would include families, couples, disabilities traveling with guests. And then the other one would be short-term, long-term renters. Oh, okay. Which travelers, and then second one would be renters. Travelers, renters, great, cool. So to make it more clear in your presentation you can have travelers and renters. That's it. Don't make a short-term, long-term. It's too early. So now you talk about for the guests they're travelers and renters. Within travelers, different kind of travelers. For renters and you can short-term, long-term. I think you missed up to make it clear there are renters and travelers will only have two. On the two, I have sub-segmentation to make it very clear to the interviewer or they think they all merge into the same column because they're in different levels. Okay, but your answer is great. I like it. Regarding all the customer segmentation which one would you prioritize and why? If we only have 45 minutes to improve Airbnb. I would prioritize the segmentation based on the impact, the size of market and the agency. And then give a scoring. You mean urgency, you mean urgency, not agency. Urgency. Sorry, urgency, yeah. And then gave a score based on all of these categories trying to identify which one scores the highest in terms of if they, if this is the most urgent problem or focus group and if they have the highest impact on the whole situation, hold this product we're trying to build and also the, what was the other one? The impact, the urgency and the size of market. Which one has the biggest in the size of market? So I'll focus on the guests. When you define size of market is based on revenue or based on number, number of people. Based on number of people, but I would think it will be the same, right? More people, more revenue. True, great. So they might challenge an interview, just need to defend yourself, but it's the right answer. It's based on the number of people wanna serve and because usually the monetization will come up later but usually the more user you have, the more likely we're able to monetize better. So we want to serve more people first and then later on figure out how can you serve more high network clients to make more money later on? But you figure out the people first, numbers. Okay, cool, okay. Very good answer, I like it. Maybe in your answer, we need to further prioritize which guests we need to prioritize. Right, so the three different segments, segment sub segments under guests would be travelers, renters, corporate gatherings and also event planning. So I guess, yeah. So again, I would prioritize them according to the impact, the size of market and also the urgency. And I would choose travelers based on the highest scoring. Why? Because I feel like the travelers are the ones that for obvious reasons, they're the biggest size of market, most highest number of people. And also they'll have the urgency since we're past COVID now. And then we have a lot of high demand for travelers wanting to finally go out and explore other places. So there's an urgency there. And then also for the impact, I think by the problems that they are facing, the impact would be more significant for these travelers. Why do you think the impact is more significant for travelers given lots of, let's say, event planners, they didn't make money in the past two years. So why do you think it's more significant to travelers, not other businesses as part of those segmentations? Because the demand is higher than the supply there. So if more people are trying to get out there to rent places for these travelers, then for businesses, even though during COVID, they may be faced with more, like the COVID situation might have impacted the businesses more, but then now as we have more demand, I think the impact for these demand trying to find a place where everywhere else is booked would be higher in terms of the impact. Very good, very good argument. Okay, do the same thing in the interview, we'll pass the interview, this is very good. Okay, okay, so Mili, here thing. What would you do to say to the interviewer after you finish prioritization? After finishing prioritization now, I know we have a focus on travelers on their gas segmentation. And then we want to identify the pain points they're facing with, so the problems. Some of the problems I identified would be dissatisfied service, not having enough amenities for the properties they're looking to rent, and then also the home security, home safety, sorry. So COVID safety is one of the concerns, health safety. And the other one is where these homes are located that they're looking to travel to. If it's in a ghetto spot, if they have a concern for the neighborhood's safety, and then the third problem would be which I identify would be the cancellation and refund policies. Why, what post COVID, why safety is the thing? During COVID safety is important. What post COVID, why safety is one of the pain points? Right, and people have more consciousness for the health safety after the COVID. So maybe before COVID, people weren't thinking much about how clean the homes needs to be for health reasons, but then after having COVID, after everything died down, now I think people get to realize how much they need to think about the safety issues within the homes they're looking to rent. Very cool. Your argument is so good, by the way. I think I've had to interview your argument. Very tired, very good. Okay, so your final pain point, which is about whatever, check in, check out, what do you mean? Uh-oh, my last pain point was actually the cancellation and refund policy. Okay, tell me more, what do you mean? Yeah, the reason why it shows that to be a problem is because what if the COVID situation were to change all of a sudden when they have to tighten the COVID restrictions again, then I believe the cancellation and refund policies would become a concern for our customers. You were saying that if they tighten again, there will be some problems, but I don't see it with China. I don't follow the logic. Okay, so I was actually thinking here if COVID restrictions were to come around again. Yes, to be tightened again. They want to, what clients wants to ensure that they have a fair cancellation refund policy in order to prevent these perhaps foreseeable circumstances. Currently on Airbnb, there's already, you can choose flexible cancellation or 24 hours cancellation. As a host, you can choose the cancellation policy. You can make it very flexible already. Yes, you can, but I feel like it's not a standardized enough. So for some of the properties, you may be able to get 50% of your money back if you choose to cancel within a certain number of days. But then for other properties, you might get your money back if canceled like three days before your trip. But there are also other properties where you don't have a cancellation policy in place at all. I feel like that could be standardized. I see, you want to standardize process. Okay, cool. All right, so that one is medium. The answer to that thing is medium because I wouldn't bring up the COVID is coming back again. So because including the interview, including myself, everyone would be like, I'm not going to come back again. We also hope we won't come back again. And also the whole world just felt like it's not going to come back again. At least we think this way or we don't prevent it coming back again. We might have new disease, other stuff. So therefore I wouldn't be making assumptions COVID come back again. We need to change the policy, different things. If you want to stick to this pain point, we need to completely restructure the answer. For example, you can say, currently one of the biggest pain points people travel through Airbnb is that there's no standardized process for cancellation. When people are very excited to book a place and then things happen, you need to change or cancel. Each place, the host have his own very flexible way to set your own cancellation policy. That's for the host, but it's really bad for a guest because the policy is different to each place, so stay. So as a guest who are having competition, high demand, not be able to find right places at the right time, it's already very stressful to find the right place and now as you book a place, and then cancellation policies cross the board. So therefore one of the biggest pain point for them is to have a standardized cancellation policy to collect the right of the guest. You can say it this way, but I still feel like I'm less committed. I still feel that this pain point is weaker compared to the first two. Okay, so you can swap out this one and create something more convincing. The key is your argument needs to be very strong and then has to be very convincing. Okay, because your last argument is not very strong, so it makes this one not very convincing. Okay, so tell me which one would you prioritize and why? So I would prioritize based on different categories. One of them would be the complexity of designing this product. So engineering complexity. The second one would be the risk involved. The third category would be implementation. The ease to implement this product and the other one would be, I think I'm missing one there. I can't remember it at all. The risk, okay. Covered risk too. So hold on, you'll cover risk? Yeah, engineering complexity. Ease to implement. Effectiveness. Effectiveness, yes. Oh, hold on, hold on, slow down. Slow down. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're not in a solution yet. You're prioritizing the pain point. Oh, okay, okay. Oh, wrong framework, wrong framework. Okay, so pain point, you go back to see the same thing. You use the prior framework, like customer segmentation, wrong framework. Okay, so what's the right framework you use? The urgency. Urgency we need to solve this problem by and if it's applicable to the entire market, to the entire segment, I don't remember the framework for pain points. Similar, size of market. Doesn't have to be all the market. It's like, do lots of people suffer from the same pain point or only one person suffer from the same pain point. That's different. Okay, so it's same framework. So size of market, how many people suffer from this pain point and how bad those, how much pain, right? For example, the last one cancellation is less painful compared with other pains you described earlier. All right, and then what's the last one? The urgency of it and then the impact. So basically the impact means how much pain. So urgency means you want to solve it yesterday. Yeah. And then do lots of people suffer from this. If lots of people suffer from it and they want to solve it yesterday, they cannot wait and it's so much pain. You don't solve it, they're gonna die tomorrow. You solve this immediately. So based on this framework, which one would you prioritize? So based on this framework, I would prioritize the dissatisfied service meaning that there may not be enough amenities and the properties as described in the property description. The reason why I choose this is because the urgency, so definitely client will have a need for having enough amenities. For example, enough blankets at home to keep them warm. And this would be like a key need for these customers. We want to identify this pain point for them. And also the impact I think is also huge is because, I mean, like why would anyone rent a place that doesn't have enough, does not have enough amenities? Like for how would they wash their hair if they don't have any shampoo or et cetera, like body wash and stuff. And then also I think the size of this, well, the pain point, the size of this pain point is also huge as well because this would be a key feature and we need to, every single property needs to make sure that they have enough amenities as described on their property listing for the users to make a decision if they want to rent it or not. Because if they come into a place that does not have enough amenities, then it'll get a really bad experience from this. I see. Okay, cool. So I understand the importance of having enough amenities. Do lots of people suffer from this, not knowing having enough amenities? I think all the Airbnb that by default they should have shampoos, stuff. Do lots of people actually suffer from lacking shampoos at the size market really big? So the reason why I selected this is because like I'm a high user of Airbnb and if I were to travel in groups of, like traveling with a few friends, I find sometimes they may have some towels but not enough for all of us to use. I see. So basically, and do you encounter this a lot? I have, yes. I have encountered where there's not enough amenities. For example, they have enough point glasses for all of us. I mean, I doubt the size of market. I doubt it's only one or two people not having enough shampoos or towels. Not everyone feels the same way. So did you yourself experience this as high frequency lacking amenities right now? I would, yes. But I would love to conduct more customer interviews to see if other people are having the same pains. Okay, cool. All right, so it looks like it's a trend. All right, so now in the interview you need very, you really need to be like, this is a trend. This is what everybody is experiencing. I haven't traveled on Airbnb for a while. I didn't know it's like missing shampoo is the thing. So you really need to be like with supporting numbers or supporting experience, seeing that this has been a trend, lots of complaints. And this is like one of the top five complaints of Airbnb is not having enough amenities when people travel missing stuff. The impact is big, you're getting on place and then you're missing towels. When you get a shower, that's really bad, whatever. So you need to have more supporting evidence. Okay, so as I mean, this is lots of people suffer from not having enough shampoo stuff. So what solution would you design for them? Some of the solutions I can think of would be, first of all, the Airbnb should have a list of all the amenities there are and the number of, let's say towels or blankets. And based on this, we'll be able to know beforehand how many you would really need and you can communicate back and forth making sure that there's enough before you get to the place. So creating a list that both sides will be able to make sure that there's enough for the users. That would be the first solution I could think of. The other one would maybe, or my moonshot idea would probably be designing like a virtual space where even before customers goes to the place physically, they're able to view on the virtual screen exactly what this place looks like and all the amenities that are already in place. They'll be able to see, hey, is there like a shampoo or is there toilet paper, is there et cetera or wine glasses and stuff? Like they may be able to open the cabinet even through this virtual space. So I think that'll be a cool feature to have. That'll be the second solution. And then the third solution that I can think of would be maybe having like a chat box built into this Airbnb that you can, but there's already that communication feature already built in. Maybe in like an automated chat box feature built into this Airbnb that it doesn't have to be the owner of the place that are replying to these standardized or not standardized, sorry, repetitive messages, just confirming some of the features or the amenities that are there. So for these repetitive questions, we can build like an FAQ, but that is automated system into this chat box where the users will be able to get answers quickly. Like they don't have to wait for the next day for the owner to wake up to respond to the messages. Very good. So let me modify your final answer, which is using a chat GBT integrated Q&A to answer all repetitive questions regarding amenities, where's the location of the place, do you have this, do you have this or don't have that, make sure to buy this, make some milk for baby before I arrive. So chat, you need to use keywords, chat GBT integrated, chat box. Okay, because it's very trending right now. Cool, but I do like the answer thing. So which one would you prioritize and why? So I would prioritize based on the ease to implement, how easy is it to implement this product. And then the second one would be the engineering complexity behind it, how difficult it is to build this product, the risk, so the risk compliance regulatory concerns that are with launching this product, and the, so there are three there, and then the effectiveness of this product. So based on this four, I would probably build the, I would probably go with my third solution, the one where it's a chat GBT integrated chat box because we already have the chat GBT feature. So by integrating this feature onto the Airbnb, so we're really integrating the features that are currently out there where we already have. So I think there's not, the engineering complexity behind it is lower to a sense that we're already working with what we have. And the ease to implement, I think it's pretty easy as well. I don't see this being more of a challenge. And then for the risk that's associated, these are just repetitive questions. I don't see any compliance regulatory concerns behind launching this product. And then the effectiveness, I think it'll be very effective. So let's say for example, I may be staying at an Airbnb during the night, in the middle of the night, I wake up, I find out, I find that like I'm really cold, there's not enough blanket. If I reach out to the owner of the property, they're not gonna respond back to me before daytime. So if I can use this chat box to get my answers or to find out where they stored more blankets in the property, I'll be able to resolve my pain point. This is amazing. The solution is very good. And how you justify solution is also very good. I think we'll pass the interview based on how eloquent you are justifying your answers. The only thing when you improve is your pain point, some of the justification of the pain point, if you improve either you swap the pain point with something more pain or something more obvious that people can get it or your justification needs to sound stronger with more supporting point. Okay, but your solution is very good. Customer segmentation is also very good. Your deliverable in terms of making seems very short of concise is also very good as well. I like it. Thank you, thank you. I think we'll pass the interview. Okay, you ready? Go on for interview. Oh, I think for you. Okay, so I think your interview ready. I think your interview ready for cases. Milly did a fantastic job doing this case. And one of the resources to use is those top 10 client fight questions you should ask an interviewer. Feel free to go to the website right here and download those questions so that you're able to ask great questions during those partner manager interviews. Make sure to watch the playlist of partner manager interview questions and answers to get ready for the next upcoming interviews as well. Make sure to like, comment and share this video with any partner manager who is going through very intensive interview preparation. This is Dr. Nia Siddhi. I'm gonna see you in my next video. Bye guys.