50% of Paytm transactions were reduced last week. What could be the reasons?

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50% of Paytm transactions were reduced last week. What could be the reasons?

Asked at Paytm over a year ago

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Deepti Gaur · Answer 1 · 2022-02-04T23:07:19+0000

Before I actually jump into the meet of the question I want to ask a few clarifying questions :

Clarifying Questions

1) I believe Paytm is India's largest mobile payments and commerce platform, so the reduction in the number of transactions we are referring here belong to India - Yes

2) Are we referring here to the number of transactions that are reduced Nationwide i.e India or any specific state/city? This is Nationwide

3) Is the issue device-specific - mobile app vs desktop or both? - This is happening for both.

I would like to understand further and want to clarify some internal and external factors that might be the root cause of the problem - Yup, Sure

Internal Factor (Techincal Side)

4) Is there any recent release we have rolled out last week - It can be a recent product launch/feature release/bug fix we have deployed on the production.

5) Was there any server changes - like upgrades or downgrade

6) Was the mobile app down for last week / Was the website downtime reported in the last week.

7) Were we running any marketing campaigns/brand awareness that expired last week.

8) Have we noticed a change in the way we used to measure a metric.

9) In last week did we notice any significant payment gateway crashes

10) Have we noticed any change in the key metric where the number of users login into the app has reduced in last week.

11) Is there any new way we are tracking an existing metric

Assuming there are no issues with data quality, I will move forward and explore further the Customer Service domain:

11) Was there any upsurge of user complaints

12) Have we noticed any change in the mobile app store rating

After this, I will try and analyse and look into the user journey

13) Is there any leakage while performing the task

Is there any case where the user is not able to access the feature

Any major UX change we have deployed, which is interfering with the primary flow/desirable action

External Factor:

1) In the last week, have we noticed if any new competitors have entered into the space or any competition promotion launch happened which lured the user to shift to another platform.

2) Have we noticed - Was last week under COVID restrictions where users are not allowed to travel and are restricted - which could mean a lesser amount of shopping, travel or other expenses as compared to others.

3) Seasonality aspect - maybe last week falls under the category which doesn't influence the user to transact - no holidays, festival or it is the end of the quarter can be an influencer.

All the steps defined above are ways to find the reasons that may have caused the reduction in the transaction.

If I discover the issue is internal which falls under any of these categories like - feature release, UX change, payment gateway crash, or server related, I would go back to the respective team Engineering, System Ops and other people available in my team and will probably look into either fixing it or roll back the issue as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, If the issue falls under any external factor, it would be a little difficult to solve immediately as I would need to go through the cycle of product development to address the same.

Amit J · Answer 2 · 2022-01-29T00:51:47+0000

50% of Paytm transactions were reduced last week. What could be the reasons?

Clarifying questions:

1) Paytm is a Indian company and not globalized yet, so i believe the transactions that we are talking about happening in India. I am assuming the data is India Wide, not specific to specific state, district or city

2) 50% Reduction - is it comparing WoW, or MoM or YoY - lets assume WoW

3) is their any specific feature within Paytm that had a major decline or was it all Paytm - Assume All features within Paytm

4) is it App based or Web based - Assumed all

I will deep dive into Internal and external factors that could lead to reduction of Tranactions:

Internal:

1) Any specific feature that was rolled out last week which caused Transctions to go down.

2) Was Server or App down for that week

3) Any specific software bug causing the reduction

4) Any legal issues (sue) last week causing the transaction to be halved.

5) Any specific promotion or marketing that ended.

6) are number of users login to app reduced that week as well or was the reduction happening at Payment gateway even though number of consumers login remains the same.

External:

1) new COVID restrictions causing people to shop/Travel less that week

2) Does competitor increased the transactions during that week or were they also suffered the reduction

3) New competition launch or competition promotion that caused consumers to shift to other platform

4) is the reduction caused on specific OS like iOS, Android or Windows?

Solution:

1) Roll back the feature or hot fix the bug if reduction happened due to that

2) Check Servers if they are working well and upto capacity and traffic

3) Work with Payment gateway app team to check on why customers payment is not going through

4) Work with Marketing team to see if promotion or new promotions can be brought into market to retent the consumer

5) Brainstorm on new features that can be brought through during COVID lockdown period to continue the engagement and hence transactions

6) Work with legal team on messaging with regards to legal issues.

7) Work with OS Account team to solve the problem with regards to traffic decline in a certain OS ecosystem

8) Check with pricing team on competition features and work on mitigation steps to win back market share.

Success Metrics:

1) Transactions increased to flat or growth vs WoW, MoM or QoQ or YoY

2) Number of Users engaging on platforms increased.