Overcoming Inconsistencies in a Logistics App: Connecting Native Features with a React Native Module
We’ve been working with a large European logistics company for three years, building and supporting their customer-facing mobile app. In this case study, we describe how we set up efficient communication between customers and the client’s support team via a chatbot integrated with the Salesforce platform.
Implementing this chatbot required integrating a native mobile app, a third-party cross-platform module, and a third-party cloud service, so inevitably we encountered a few challenges. Our ability to quickly extend our multi-skill team and communicate efficiently with the client’s backend team – plus our constructive attitude – helped us successfully implement this feature.
Background
We launched the logistics application for our client three years ago. The app was designed to help customers track and manage their parcels, get discounts from partner shops, and connect to the support team. The chatbot module was used for customer support.
While Mobindustry has been working on the native mobile apps, the client’s development team is responsible for the backend, streamlining all business processes. From time to time, subcontractors are engaged to develop specific parts; in particular, the integrated chatbot was developed as a cross-platform React Native module by a third-party team.
At first, the queue feature didn’t seem complicated
As their customer base grew, our client needed to optimize their customer support service and chose Salesforce as their new support platform.
Our task was to integrate the mobile app – namely, the chatbot – with Salesforce by implementing a queue that would direct customers to a Salesforce support agent one by one and dynamically show what place a customer held in the queue.
Initially, the plan was that our team would work on the frontend part of this solution while the backend and quality assurance was performed on the client’s side.
The challenges
At first, the queue feature didn’t seem complicated. But after thorough analysis, we discovered a few challenges:
1. Our client didn’t have any specifications or use cases for this feature, so we offered to create them from scratch.
2. Because we were implementing a feature that worked solely on the backend, it was important to review and update the backend part of the app. As the backend team was on our client’s side, we needed to establish communication with them and help to form the testing requirements.
3. The React Native chatbot was implemented a few years ago, so it needed to be updated as it didn’t fully support the Salesforce integration. The third-party contractor who created it was unavailable, so we needed to rely on our own resources.
Our solutions
First, we offered to create a technical specification for our client. Having this specification was especially important as several teams were involved. Our business analyst analyzed the business requirements, did market research and developed a functional specification.
Our Android developer with expertise in React Native updated the chatbot
Quality assurance for the application would usually be performed on the client’s side, but because this feature was complex, we added our own quality assurance engineer. She made a comprehensive impact analysis of the feature and was able to provide test sets for both the frontend and backend teams.
Our Android developer with expertise in React Native updated the chatbot according to the technical requirements.
The results
We made the necessary changes to the React Native chatbot module and successfully integrated Salesforce into the mobile app by implementing the queue feature. With the help of our QA, who worked with both the Mobindustry development team and our client’s development teams, we managed to perform comprehensive feature testing of the app, backend, and integration.
It took our business analyst eight hours to conduct research and determine technical specifications for the queue feature. Implementing it took 35 development hours.
Quality assurance took us 15 hours; we checked the new feature according to test cases and then performed full regression testing to make sure nothing we implemented interfered with the app’s other features.
If you’re looking for a company that can help you with your existing logistics product, or you want to build one from scratch, you might as well add Mobindustry to your list of potential partners. To find out more about our company and how we work with our clients, check this article.
Mar 30, 2022
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