Imagine you are the Product Manager at Beacon. The CEO asks you to build an in-app chat feature. What would you do? Beacon is a company that focuses on assiting business with their digital supply chain and freight platform

The interview question is asking you to showcase your skills and knowledge in product management, specifically how you'd approach incorporating a new feature - an in-app chat, within the existing product - the Beacon's digital supply chain and freight platform. The interviewer wants to understand your thought process, ability to analyze and plan, and your understanding of the implication of this feature addition on the customer experience and overall business goals. Key points to answer this question are:

1. Understand the need: Analyze why the CEO wants to incorporate this feature and how it'll benefit the users.
2. Research: Look into the existing platform and its target users; also examine the market and competitors.
3. Plan, Design, and Prioritize: Create a well-structured plan to implement the feature. Consider the user experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design, prioritize the feature's workflow.
4. Resources and Timeline: Evaluate the technical requirements, resources, cost, and a plausible timeline for the feature's integration.
5. Test and Evaluate: Plan on how to test the feature before launching, and evaluate the potential effects and feedback.

After understanding the need for an in-app chat feature from the CEO, I'll start with user analysis to see how this feature can be beneficial to our users and coherent with Beacon's current operating model. Understanding the pain points or communication gaps within our current framework can help in designing the feature optimally. I'll then conduct competitive analysis to see how similar platforms are managing in-app chat features.

Next, I'll create a product requirement document (PRD), wherein I'll define the workflows and chat functionalities, ensuring this align seamlessly with our user interface. The PRD will include not only technical specifications but also the dependencies, risks, and a clear roadmap. I'll coordinate with the design and development teams and roll out a timeline for the feature addition, considering our resources, costs, and priorities.

Before launching the feature, I'll plan on doing a Beta-testing among a controlled user base. This will help in understanding the realtime challenges and user responses. We'll then make the necessary adjustments, and once we are confident about the product-market fit, we'll launch it for all users. Following the launch, I'll plan to iterate this feature based on user feedback and usage patterns.

I would first want to understand the business reason behind this request. Assumptions may often lead to delivering a solution that doesn’t solve the real problem. Let's say the CEO wants to solve the communication problem between the supply chain parties.

I'll research to understand the context, limitations, and opportunities of such a feature within our platform. Then, I would work on defining the core functionalities of the chat, such as private and group chats, notifications, attachments, and maybe even automated chatbots.

My next step would be to decide to build this in-house or integrate with existing chat solutions. All factors such as cost, time, security, consistency with the rest of the product, and maintenance should be taken into account.

Once decided, I would get a cross-functional team together, including UX/UI designers, software engineers, and stakeholders to design a prototype. After the design is in place and thoroughly evaluated, it would go into development according to an agreed roadmap.

Finally, before officially launching, I would insist on user testing, gather feedback, make necessary changes, and keep iterating to ensure a seamless, user-friendly chat feature within Beacon's platform.