There has been a sudden spike in partial order deliveries by Zomato. How would you solve it?

• Sudden spike could be because of following reasons:

  • Restaurant partners

    • Some changes in catalog that restaurant partners are not aware of (Awareness)

    • Not enough stock of one particular item/few items due to walk-in unexpected demand (Stock issue)

    • Not enough stock of one particular item/few items due to online unexpected demand (Stock issues)

    • Some changes in the restaurant staff that caused spike (local bandhs/external issues where there’s more mind space by partners rather than items)

    • Some unexpected factors like no power/machinery not working etc. in the restaurant

  • Delivery partners

    • Theft by some type of delivery partners who onboarded recently

    • Packaging of the product is not right which is causing damage/spillage of specific kind of items (not an sudden spike causer, so ruling out)

    • New DEs onboarded into the system and are unaware how to pick items and are missing out on a few items in a hurry

    • Some feature release on DE app not showing all items to be picked up

  • Customers

    • Theft by some specific set of customers who onboarded recently on the app

    • Wrong assumption that item is not delivered (not spike reason, ruling out)

    • Wrong expectations from customers about items due to some catalog changes

To further deep-dive, I will bucket these issues into metrics pareto I will look into to narrow down the reasons

Assuming it’s because of peak restaurant traffic, I would solve it through following:

• Restaurant partners

  • By creating awareness of complaints increase

  • By nudging on app only in case of high order volumes, to specifically give input that they have packed all items

  • By retrieving money from restaurants in case of refunds to customers

• Zomato

  • Would stop taking order froma particular restuarant if demand is very high and if there are high complaints

  • Would order/prioritize other restaurants over hgih demand restuarant

  • Will make certain items unavailable on the app (after confirmation from restaurant partner)

  • Will modify the offerings of an item on app depending on stock availability