Breaking Down "Retail-Co", Your First Sales Brief as a Technical Project Manager (Real Example) transcript

Hello there. So, topic 1.4 and this is a very important topic where we are really going to cover a real case study. And in this case study, I'm also willing to show you how as a technical project manager, I approach to this problem statement and how do I process this information. Without further ado, let's jump in. Now, in this case in this case study, what the real issue is, so there's a mention of Retail Co. uh an online operating store that has 340 stores, okay, across South Asia.

Okay, it has 340 stores, that means it's a big store. So, I can imagine a big system working behind the curtain here, okay? And uh all complaints, refunds, and exchange queries queries are handled in store. Okay. Now, as a technical project manager, what if I see this? This is the first thing that came into my mind already. All the complaints, refunds, and exchange queries are handled in store. Now, that's a really pathetic experience just because let me imagine I got into the store.

Let's say I bought a headphone for myself that has a warranty of 2 years. And after few days of using that, I noticed that it is not working as it is expected to work. Now, as a customer, just to claim my warranty or just to let the store know about the defect in the product, I have to now head back to the store, okay? Now, this is not something that as a user I I think would be a good experience uh right? Okay, now let's let's move further.

Now because of that, the walk-ins searched 38% in 18 months. Yeah, because uh out of 100 successful sales they're doing, 38 of the users are actually coming back to stores with the issue of the product in 18 months of time frame. Okay, that was expected for me as well because as I was thinking about the problem, I realized that was something going to backfire us. Now because of that interaction, what it has caused, it has caused huge staff burnout.

And even uh CSAT, that's a customer satisfaction score dropping from 81 to 63. Absolutely because as a user itself, whenever I think and whenever I I'm keeping myself in the shoes of a customer I realized that, okay, that is not a good experience that I'm getting from store. And now that is causing them to have a long lines in the store. And because of that long line and handling those customers who are coming with complaints or refund issues now the internal staff are even feeling like burnout because the way I see it is like the staff are expected to sell the product as well.

At the same time, they're also asked to handle these client complaints. And because of this, the queues and all these things, even the customer satisfaction score that means initially out of 100 customers, if 81 were happy with the shopping experience of the store, now it has just [snorts] become 63. That's a huge loss for for uh any store because they have significantly uh reduced their customer satisfaction score to 63, right?

So, yeah, that's not good thing. And now, okay, now leadership team have asked to build an portal, yeah, augmented portal, so that customer do not need to visit to a store to raise an issue. Okay, yeah, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Okay. Now, this is how I portray information and think whenever I process information as a technical project manager. But, at the same time, there are more things that's coming to my mind.

Well, I do have uh a surface information, but there are still a few things that's running in my mind. Okay. Now, leadership team is wanting to build a online support portal, but the way I'm thinking is like Okay, the online support portal is a big thing. It's a very vague term, right? And so, what are the key features that we want to have in that? And what is the timeline? What about the budget? How much investment plan do we have?

Because whenever it's about a IT process, I do remember uh a three-sided triangle that has a scope in it, right? That has a timeline in it, and there is of course a budget in it. So, what are these key things? Now, that is also coming in my mind. But, as a technical project manager, I always ensure to pay attention to detail. So, let me check if there's anything else uh in the remaining slides to provide me with those information.

For now, yes, we just understood the complaints are massive. The CS ET score is going down. People walking into the store for complaining is is increasing, right? So, it's that 30%. And again, the another thing is all the stores are affected because of the issue. And [snorts] since all the stores are involved in selling the products, it's obvious that there could be defect in the product that they're selling. Of course, that's that's uh understandable.

Okay. Now, let's see what else information that I have. Let me uh Sorry. Let me clear this for you. My bad. Yeah, okay. Now, let's see. Uh Okay. Now, there's a deadline. Now, of course, client expectation is to have a full portal rollout within 12 weeks. Okay. First thing here is a good still. Like, what does a full portal means like, right? What How do we quantify what a full portal looks like? Is it about ability for customers to be logged in and ability for the store reps to log in and they talk with each other?

Uh or is it like just about having a customer portal and then AI doing everything on the background, handling the product queries and everything? So, what does it really means like, you know? So, that is the thing that's unclear to me. So, I want to quantify the scope. With regard to deadline, I see there is a 12 weeks. And as a technical project manager, what I know is like uh in a month, we have 4 weeks. So, 12 weeks is 4 * 3 = 12.

So, that's basically 3 months of time then that we have. Okay. In 3 months, what is the thing that we can come up? Okay. Now, yeah, this is a good thing. So, MVP model. So, what a MVP is is like MVP is a minimum viable product. So, that is kind of a system that has enough feature to support immediate needs of a customer. Or let's say our client. So, that means in within 12 weeks of time we cannot do everything all at once, but there would be something that we can definitely do which is obvious and which is the minimal viable product that solve majority of a customer issue, or let's say client's issue.

For this simple example, let's understand. Okay, in 3 weeks of time Sorry, in 3 months of time what I can do is I can develop a customer portal where customer able to upload the details of the product that are having defect. And then I can build a store representative system where the store reps would be able to uh view all the complaints from the store buyers who are submitting the complaints. And depending on the nature of issue, the store reps can then take action from the end and make sure the user is supported and make sure that the user is hard enough, okay?

So, this is the thing that I can think for now. And with time, after the full 3 months of delivery, what we can do is like we can add AI models and make sure to reduce the uh customer support inquiries handled by the store reps themselves and let AI do the job, okay? That's a very high-level thing that that is coming to my mind. That's just how I'm thinking for now. Okay, so that is the information that I have. Now, let's go to stakeholders.

So, the interested party whenever we start working on this project would be the head of customer experience. So, he's the primary stakeholders. So, I should be communicating very closely with him. I would report our progress with him very closely. Following with CTO. And there would be regional store managers. So, they are secondary stakeholders. So, for the secondary stakeholders, it basically means like they are interested, but uh they their power or their interest in the project would be a bit less than those of primary one.

So, for the sake of clarity or for the sake of simplicity, what I would do is like for all the project status report and the communication, I would email or I would be best uh reaching out to the head of customer experience and CTO. While I'll keep regional store managers informed about the progress as we move forward. Okay, now that's that. Now, in case of budget as well, so there's 25,000 budget uh that's allocated for phase one.

So, that would be for MVP for uh 3 months of work. That's a good budget. And they have clearly mentioned that there is no any system integration in scope. That means this store does not is not asking us to integrate any of those any of the data that they have mentioned in their own system. So, it's it's a kind of independent system we are building. Okay. Uh Now, these are the information that I have and that how I play in my mind so that the more the problem statement I scratch, uh I get a better context of a problem and I understand the problem very deep so that I know what are the next question that I'm going to ask with these stakeholders.

Okay, that's how we think. Uh and also getting back to like why would even RetailCo invest on building such system is like uh if we see the researches even from the Gartner, so what they say is whenever there's a customer support systems built in, now the store's cost per contact can be reduced up to 80% compared to in-person resolution. Okay? So, whenever we handle all these things by a system, by a defined process, we are basically cost-cutting the operation charge for the store and saving it for the store.

So, it's the system that we're building is a kind of investment to the store as well. So, that is the very reason why these stores come to us and make a digital system for them. Okay. Now, with that, also there was another finding so that says that even mature delivery practices wasted waste 28 times less money because of clearly defined requirements eliminating cost rework during during development. So, that means these kind of system are able to show the processes, show the system that the user and they are likely to prevent wasting organizations from wasting money more than 28 times.

Again, that's another data that supports, okay, why these digital systems are placed in first hand. Okay. Now, this is the case study and we covered how I think as a technical project manager whenever I get the case study. Now, in the further modules, we'll see how we dissect them in detail, but that will be covered starting from module two.