Could you tell me about a time when you had to convince someone of an idea and how you did it?

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Anonymous · Accepted Answer

This goes back to the time when I was a product manager at Company XYZ, which
provides online therapy to students worldwide. At that time, the process of
matching practitioners with students was being handled manually by a
cross-functional internal team. I identified this as an opportunity for
automation.
However, the Therapist Success team was concerned about the additional workload
this automation might place on therapists. They were worried that therapists
might not respond to requests or resolve conflicts, especially in cases where
multiple therapists were working with the same school and might want to take on
the same students simultaneously, potentially leaving other therapists with
fewer students.
To address these concerns, I connected with the internal team and presented my
proposal. The proposal involved giving each practitioner opportunities based on
their current capacity, ensuring they would act by sending timely notifications,
and improving the matching time, which previously took three weeks. This would
help our schools start the service more efficiently and with fewer delays.
I conducted a survey and several interviews with groups of practitioners to
assess the desirability of this feature. Collaborating with our designers and
engineers, we developed an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to validate this idea
quickly. I then ran an experiment with a small group of practitioners and
tracked their behavior in a controlled environment. The results showed a quick
response time of 2.7 business days and a reduced service start timeline,
dropping from three weeks to just six days overall.
I presented this data to the leadership team and the Therapist Success team, who
were initially concerned about retention rates. After reviewing the positive
results, we received the green light to launch this feature for all our
practitioners.
After the feature's launch, we observed a drastic reduction in the time required
to match therapists and students, from three weeks to just three days on
average. Customer satisfaction increased by 25%, as they could start their
service faster with minimal involvement. Additionally, therapist retention
increased by 50% year-over-year, as therapists were able to manage their
caseloads independently.

Anonymous · Answer

Was working at Careem as a Product Manager. I was responsible for improving the
driver app.

I really wanted there to be a "money estimator" feature for drivers. My
hypothesis was that this would improve retention meaningfully, if drivers could
see how much they could earn in a day or week.

I got a lot of push back from our legal team about this idea. They had multiple
concerns - first that it would set potetially false expectations and create a
risk of claims if drivers didn't earn the amount, second that it could also
create a situation where drivers behaved in unhealthy ways to hit what could
come across as targets

I reassured them that I would monitor this sort of action once I implemented the
change, and that I would launch it as an AB test so that we could be confident
there were no negative effects.

They however didn't agree, and therefore I also created a business case to
estimate how much revenue we could generate through better retention of our
drivers. Although this was quite high level and based on a lot of assumptions,
it helped me to convince my own leadership to support me. And with their help, I
managed to also convince our legal team to allow this experiment.

Could you tell me about a time when you had to convince someone of an idea and how you did it?

Did you come across this question in an interview?

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