Disclaimer: This post is not intended to discuss whether it is right or wrong business decision.

Yesterday, Zomato announced the launch of a new delivery fleet exclusively for vegetarian customers. Source

Background:

Zomato is a food delivery company in India. In India, many strict vegetarians prefer not to eat from restaurants that also serve non-vegetarian food. Some even avoid food that has come into contact with non-vegetarian items.

To cater to these customers, Zomato introduced a new delivery fleet distinguished by the color of their t-shirts. While regular delivery personnel wear red or orange t-shirts, this special fleet would wear green t-shirts specifically for vegetarian food deliveries.

What if this wasn’t revealed on X

When Zomato’s CEO announced this launch on X, there was significant feedback, both positive and negative, regarding the risks associated with this decision.

As mentioned, It is not our focus to evaluate the validity of the risks mentioned on X.

However, Zomato’s CEO later reversed the decision and decided not to use green t-shirts. Instead, both vegetarian-only and regular delivery personnel will wear the same red or orange t-shirts.

• This decision would have impacted revenue of Zomato significantly if real customer would not have shared their feedback on X.
• If Zomato’s CEO had not announced this on X, they might have received this feedback only after implementing their technical changes in app.
• They would have lost some money on merchandise.
• There might have many other technical changes in backend, many defects related to them. Overall a development cost involved.
• Time and Cost saving.

What do we learn here as a QA?

This incident tells us how early feedback saved Zomato from loosing money, time and customers. This gives a great practical case study for QAs to understand, why veterans in the software industry emphasise early feedback. 

Importance of Early Feedback

• Early feedback from QAs could mitigating risks and minimise the likelihood of costly rework or negative user experiences down the line.
• Early feedback enables QA to prioritise user experience from the beginning, ensuring that design decisions and usability considerations align closely with user preferences and expectations.
• Additionally, early feedback promotes agile adaptation by enabling teams to change quickly in response to shifting requirements or user preferences. 
• Sometimes delayed feedback could loose the customers. As we seen in the case of Zomato. Our customers are always hunting for a execuse to change the services which they are consuming.

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