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Design a product to improve diners' experiences at restaurants after they finish the meal.

This is A REAL INTERVIEW question from FLAG (can not name the company). The question itself was not hard, but there was a followup question which was quite interesting: Why do you think such product doesn't exist in the market today?

Thoughts on how to answer this question in general?
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Question :- what is the goal of Improving the experience ? Customer Satisfaction? return visit? Better tips? 

Goal:- lets assume/set the altruistic goals of increasing customer satisfaction since that will improve other things eventually 

Use segments (Assuming in-person dining only):- 

A)Family dining:

1) people who eat 1-4 times  weak at restaurants 

2) people who eat 1-4 times  month at restaurants 

Business dining:

1) Business dinners for 1-3 folks

2) Business dinenr for 3-10 folks

 

B) Target persona (USA for now):-

Reach is higher for family dining since it consist of thee are approx 100 M households in USA ( while fewer businesses) 

Impact is higher on the occasional family dining experince since we believe that the frequent diners are already going out and are satisfied with the experience .. so its more important to solve the painpoints for A.2

Pain points (blockers preenting A.2 from coming back mroe frequently):- 

1) I did not like all the dishes .. I am not sure if I want to come again and try the rest of the dishes

2)I did not like the service but I like the food 

3) I like the service but I wish they could cater the food to my preference by doing some customization 

4) I did not like the price to make it worth coming here often 

5) I do not like to eat out but at the same time I do not like to cook .. so I eat out to escape cooking 

 

Solutions

1. save my preferred dishes, get reccos from friends who know me for good dishes (fb matches friends who have been to this place) 

2. Have a way to share the experience and request another waiter, cook? 

3. Save my special needs/preferences "less salt, less spicy, no fried stuff etc " so that if I forget to mention they know what I like and have the ability to request these in advance before going there to be assured of them. Make is easy for me to come there 

4) survey customers who think the cost is high . and see if its worth providing promotinal coupons to this target segment to get them hooked? 

5) Provide take out options? private room/corner reservations? exploring the palate of these users?

 

Priortize 

1, 2,  and specially 3) seems easy to implement with tecj .. lot of people have custom preferences and if you can customize the food for them they will prefer to stick to the restaurants where they are assured of satisfaction .. by making it "no brainer" to eat there by customizing the dishes to their taste you are winning them easily and expanding the potential of repeat customers. 

 

Risk :- 

even after doing all that Customer just does not have the capacity to afford eating out more often 

 

 

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Hey there,

Thank you for posting your answer. I like your structure but I think the question was asking about "imporving the experience after they finish the meal". Some of the solutions presented above are not specific to after finishing the meal. I suggest you try answering it again / ediring your answer to make it more specific to post meal. Here are some sample pain points that come to my mind:

- I loved a food and want to know how they made it.

- I loved a meal and want to remember to order it next time I'm there.

- I have some left overs and want to have a similar good experience when I eat the left overs (what if some parts of the meal (e.g. rice) is finished and therefore, I cannot have a similar experiece).

- I am unhappy about how much I have to pay

etc
2
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