DoorDash Rewards Program That Keeps Delivery Customers Coming Back
Company: DoorDash
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are interviewing for a product manager role at DoorDash. Design a loyalty program for DoorDash customers whose purpose is better retention: keeping customers ordering over time instead of drifting away. Explain who the program targets, how it works, and how you would know it is succeeding.
```hint Decide whose behavior you are paying to change
Customers who already order every week will collect any reward you offer. Work out which group's ordering habits a program could realistically change, and build each reward around that group's reasons for ordering less or leaving.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should the program reshape DoorDash's existing paid membership, sit beside it as something free, or replace it?
- Whose retention matters most: brand-new customers, occasional customers, frequent subscribers, or people who have stopped ordering?
- Does the program cover only restaurant delivery, or also grocery, convenience, retail and pickup orders?
- Is there a cost ceiling, such as a minimum margin per order, and may merchants fund part of the rewards?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A precise retention goal and a target segment, with reasons that segment's behavior can change
- Why the segment orders rarely or churns, and how each reward mechanic answers a specific reason
- How the program fits with the existing paid membership, merchants and Dashers, including who pays for rewards
- Program economics: incremental orders compared with rewards paid on orders that would have happened anyway
- Metrics with a holdout-based measurement plan and guardrails for margin, cannibalization, fraud and delivery quality
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you show that the program caused the retention gain rather than simply attracting customers who were going to stay anyway?
- Subscribers start dropping their paid plan because the free program now gives them enough. What do you change?
- How would you stop people from creating new accounts to farm entry-level rewards?
Overview: A DoorDash product design question asking you to create a loyalty program that improves customer retention. It tests segment selection, reward mechanics tied to why customers drift, fit with the existing paid membership, program economics, and holdout-based measurement with guardrails.