Strategy question
You're a PM at Instacart delivery experience. The CEO of the company wants you to fix the worst delivery experience. How will you do that?
- Instacart
- Strategy
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Operational product thinking, diagnosing and fixing the weakest point in an existing delivery experience using data.
How to approach it
- Clarify what 'worst' means with data, late deliveries, wrong or missing items, or poor shopper communication, since the fix differs by cause.
- Segment the problem, is it concentrated in specific stores, regions, or order types like large or perishable orders.
- Investigate root cause for the top issue, e.g. if wrong items are the top complaint, check shopper training, item substitution logic, or store inventory accuracy.
- Propose a fix, e.g. improving the substitution flow so shoppers can message the customer in real time before swapping an item.
- Pilot the fix in the affected stores or regions before a full rollout, to validate impact without disrupting the whole network.
- Define success metrics, complaint rate reduction for the targeted issue and customer satisfaction score post-delivery.
What a strong answer includes
- Insists on identifying the specific worst issue with data first, rather than guessing at a generic fix for 'bad delivery experience'.
- Proposes a concrete mechanism, real-time substitution communication, tied directly to a likely top complaint like wrong items.
- Segments by store, region, and order type to find where the problem concentrates before fixing broadly.
- Pilots the fix in a limited scope first, showing disciplined rollout rather than a company-wide change based on assumption.
Common mistakes
- Proposing a fix without first identifying, with data, what the actual worst part of the experience is.
- Assuming the same fix applies uniformly across all stores and regions.
- Rolling out a fix company-wide without piloting it first.
Likely follow-up questions
- What data would you look at first to identify the worst issue.
- How would you pilot this fix before a full rollout.
- How would you measure whether the fix actually worked.
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More questions from Instacart
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop