Problem:
To Build a feature which will eventually help NowBroker website to gain customer insights and increase the revenue by attracting more sales from housing rental channel and building efficient end to end transaction based model.
Introduction:
Living in a dream house is everyone desire where every individual wish to have decent rooms and dining area, and easy connectivity to the office, easily accessible for kids manage schooling and getting the grocery from closer by. Now, Every individual have their own behaviour and priority while choosing the house based on their priorities in life, and age group. Old age group would definitely prefer to stay place accessible to the some open area, lots of greenery and convenient place for yoga/exercise, whereas Young people would more prefer to stay somewhere close to the happening area where they can visit to dining places easily.
Customer interviews:
While building customer centric solution, Customer interviews are among the best channel to understand the current ecosystem problems and getting the in-depth customer reviews. And to understand more on the problem I reached out to few of my friends living in different cities on rented houses and asked the questions related to the difficulties faced while moving to the new house or shifting from the different cities. Interestingly, after reaching out to the around 12 friends, I figured out everyone had different expectation before moving to the house and how difficult it turned for them to find out the desired house. Majority of the interviews which I conducted people were unsatisfied with the current ecosystem which we have today to find out of house and moreover, its time consuming process to find the house.
Few friends also said that lot of houses which is been posted online have the half-filled information posted online. Also, many complaint about the fake phots of the housed posted.
Among the interviews conducted by me, 5 were bachelor girls, 4 were bachelor boys and 3 were married. All of them had different problems while searching for the rented house. Of course all the them had different expectations in their mind which makes the search process different for everyone. Below are the categorized based problem for them:
| Bachelor Boys |
| Expectations |
| Renting a house/room at decent location Easily accessible to restaurants, pubs Should have fitness center nearby Less interference from the Owner Guest should be allowed at home |
| Issues |
| Finding a house is time consuming task as it requires to visit in personal to all the shortlisted places Too much deposit amount is being quoted by the owner Clarilty on the move out norms and reduction of painting charges Less clarity on Maintenance cost, as many times these charges is being revealed after move in In case of moving to different city, Its get difficult to know which area is best to live and under budget, and also easy to commute to the office |
| Bachelor Girls |
| Expectations |
| Decent room size Preference of house near to the busy or moving road or organised society due to safety concerns Friendly neighbours House should be at 15-20 min travel time distance from office Reachability to nearby malls, metro station |
| Issues |
| No clarity on place to stay while moving from different city No option to book house online Many landlords doesn’t accept the card or online payment, they still demand the cash only No specific format of photos posted online by landlords, and that make difficult to understand size of the house and rooms Agreement norms vary from owner to owner Brokers charge almost a month money for finding any house |
| Married Family |
| Expectations |
| Renting a house/room at decent location location Shopping market should be nearby for buying groceries Play area for kids Nearby meditation/fitness center Parking space availability for vehicle |
| Issues |
| Pets should be allowed at home Not enough area for kids to play House landlords does not update the availability status after being rented out Water issues, and dependent on water tanks at many places Trust issues on brokers |
Feature Table:
As we dig down in the problem, knowing your competitor is the important step to understand the market sizing, what feature others offer, and at what price. It also helps to understand the behaviour of customers on which they shifts to different brand on providing some unique feature or service. I have captured some of the competitors data and there offerings below:
Although most of the competitors solutions provide renting house solution in different ways. Few targets the more customer by putting more posts, more regions covered, but not bothering about the detailed and complete information the user.
Only few of them provides the end to end ecosystem from searching a house to scheduling house visit, getting all paper work done and managing the monthly payments. Although I believe setting up complete end to end infrastructure is complex and requires more man work, and also a premium charge on users for their service, but this solves various problems faced by the user on finding a house to getting the paper work done. Also, provides one platform for all the queries, payment and raising any issues.
User persona:
After conducting the user interviews, the next step is to capture their behaviours and frustrations to understand their needs. For that, we will have to break down the user personas into the different segments, as different people might have the different problems, frustrations and needs. Based on the interviews, I have concluded the three segments for defining the problem and those are mentioned in user persona comparison diagram below:
In above user persona we discussed about behavior, needs and frustrations of the various categorized group. All the different segments of groups define the different needs and might lead to have different solutions as well. Besides the fact that our one of the largest consumer segment comes from the Bachelor Females to rent property so in Version 1, We are just focusing on one sort of category first and will try meet the needs for them.
Proposed solutions:
Additional filters to house searching:
Detailed onboarding terms and condition, water and electricity bills included or not in monthly rental, clarity on exit charges, painting charges
3D based image lookup modelling:
Based on our user personas, Bachelor females shows their dissatisfaction on the house images posted online because of low clarity images, not getting the exact size of the rooms, and also posting only few of the phots online. So, having a 3D based image modelling model would solve all the problems and customers will not have to visit the house all the time.
End to end transaction-based model, to solve user problem related to the concerns about the house, brokerage, monthly rental payment, instant deposit refund and dedicated place to raise concerns.
Imagine having a single platform for people looking for house, where they can find the out the desired house and have better clarity of house location and details, about the nearby locality, and norms even before visiting the house. This will drastically reduce the efforts by customers to visit all the houses for comparison.
Having the payment integrated solution will lead to more customer satisfaction and easy settlement of month payments to landlords, and instant deposit refunds also.
Validation of properties before onboarding:
Currently, there are no rules or standard set by the companies to put only high-quality photos or completing all the house details while posting ad. Also, even posting the house ad without having the phots are allowed, which make the customers difficult to have the clarity and that add more visits to house.
Search visibility based on office and nearby location:
People moving from different cities find it difficult to know the places to stay and they end up with putting lot of question online or through friends, so having a feature which helps those segment to put the office location in search and tells the best places to stay near in desired budget
Hassle free shifting to house:
We discussed the frustration in user personas that different house owners have their different rules and onboarding and exit charges. This becomes the issues of awareness of those norms and people complain about ending up paying more amount. Having one place and one set of rules will give the more customer confidence and clarity on the rules and charges
Monthly payments and deposit management:
One place to have the monthly payment and deposit submissions will increase the on payments cycle and reduce the cash transaction. This feature will also help the owners to get instantly paid the monthly bills and customers to get the instant deposit on exit
Additional one-time service of essential house repairs:
This service will attract the more customers, if customer finds the house in good condition. House repair option is to have used only once within a week period of moving the house and completing if any house repair work is needed
Direct deals with NowBrokers: One place solution to have the booking house online and directly dealing with the NowBrokers for bookings and exits
Prioritization:
Now once we have all the proposed solutions, next step is to prioritizing the solution and further breaking into the different segments which would be most beneficial from the feature/service implementation. Although all the solution might add the value to customer and increase the revenue but implementing all of them at once, would not be possible based on the effort and implementation cost required. So we will have to find the most feasible solution to implement first which would be feasible to develop and most impactful to generate the revenue
Now, as we have the scoring of features, we will put them in value-complexity matrix to see which feature will add more value and have the less complexity to develop to get prioritize
Aspiring Product Manager 