## Diagnose Why Delivered Food Arrives Cold A delivery marketplace is receiving reports that food arrives cold. Describe how you would determine where the problem occurs, which orders are most affected, and what intervention you would recommend testing. ### Constraints & Assumptions - The complaint label may be incomplete or inconsistently reported. - An order passes through several stages, including preparation, pickup, travel, and handoff. - The analysis should distinguish a change in the underlying experience from a change in reporting behavior. - Do not assume that the longest stage is automatically the cause. ### Clarifying Questions to Ask - How is “cold food” observed: support contacts, refunds, ratings, surveys, or a direct temperature measure? - When did the issue begin, and is there a baseline or a specific market, merchant, or order type of concern? - Which event timestamps are reliable and consistently available? - Did the product, complaint flow, merchant mix, courier supply, weather, or delivery-area policy change? - What decision must this analysis support, and what customer and marketplace guardrails matter? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Defines a primary outcome and acknowledges label quality, reporting propensity, and possible missingness. - Decomposes end-to-end time into operational stages at the order level and validates timestamp ordering. - Segments by merchant, distance, market, item type when available, courier wait, batching, time of day, and other supported factors without mistaking correlation for cause. - Compares the affected period or cohort with a suitable baseline and separates composition shifts from within-segment deterioration. - Prioritizes a mechanism-specific intervention and proposes a credible experiment or phased evaluation with guardrails. - Communicates uncertainty, practical impact, and the limits of the available proxy for food temperature. ### Follow-up Questions 1. How would you handle orders with missing or impossible timestamps? 2. What if complaints rise but delivery times and ratings remain stable? 3. How would you distinguish merchant preparation issues from courier travel issues? 4. Which guardrail metrics would you monitor during an intervention?