How Rainforest QA Helps HappyDoc Save Time, Scale Testing, and Deliver a Better Customer Experience

The Challenge

Before Rainforest, HappyDoc struggled with a few key problems: 

• No formal QA process in place
  The testing schedule for a platform like HappyDoc should be rigorous. But before Jack joined the executive team in 2024, the team didn’t have any QA process in place. “We didn’t have any unit testing, no formal QA, nothing,” said Jack. “We lived by the ship it and pray plan.”

• Disruptions to the customer experience
  With new features shipping without proper QA, customers experienced a slew of issues on their end. “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We were lucky if we caught issues before they went out the door,” said Jack. He shared one notable example—users couldn’t create new document templates from an existing template. “As a new business, every one of those negative interactions was a big problem for us.”
  
  
• 0 bug-free releases for at least 3 months
  The team was attempting a weekly release schedule, but without proper QA, each deployment bubbled up new issues. “We didn’t have a successful release for at least 3 months,” said Jack. “We were pressured to ship features faster, keep things moving out the door, and keep pace with our competition. But we also couldn’t shift things that were broken, so we were struggling.” 

The Rainforest QA Solution

After using another platform for frontend testing at a different company, Jack was set on finding a new solution that wouldn’t waste the team’s time, efforts, resources, and budget. “Plus, the quality of the testing I’ve seen at other places just isn’t great,” said Jack. His priorities were clear—find a testing solution that would help the team balance speed, quality, and cost. 

HappyDoc has found great success with Rainforest QA:

• A built-in QA team with limited ramp time
  When the team implemented Rainforest QA, they started by identifying high impact areas that the test managers could go test—anything that would impact the customer experience needed to be tested first. He started by writing out all of the things they wanted to test manually, in a classical QA structure—or the Gherkin testing format. He quickly turned to recording videos for the test managers—to talk through what they wanted to test and also why they wanted to test it. And the result? Fast, thorough QA for every release. 

• A QA process that works for a nuanced solution
  Part of the challenge with HappyDoc is that the output isn’t deterministic. Every time you use the platform, you’re going to get different results, even from the same recording. “Talking through those nuances, and explaining the why behind each test, was critical to make sure our tests were dynamic enough to deal with changes,” said Jack. 

• Low overall costs vs. other platforms

While other platforms presented themselves as a cheaper option, Jack found that the overall price was much more attractive with Rainforest. He said, “Other platforms were cheaper to get set up—their tooling was cheaper—but when you look at the complete price with resourcing, Rainforest wins every time.”

• Real-time recording tests
  The team’s primary use case is for their customers to record a conversation between the vet and the patient’s owner. This process wasn’t possible to test with any other platform they reviewed. “But because Rainforest runs a full VM, I could install some software, download the MP3, and play it back,” said Jack. This effectively gave the team the ability to test recordings in real time. “This capability is huge for us,” said Jack.
  
  
• A better relationship with customers
  “Rainforest has been critical for our relationship with our customers,” said Jack. “If we would have continued to be unreliable on a week-to-week basis, it would not have gone well.” He described the desire the team had to stop acting like a startup and start behaving like an enterprise. “And Rainforest gave us that stability.”
  
  
• A more robust testing process, including UX
  With Rainforest QA, it’s easy for HappyDoc to test more than just functionality. “It allows me to validate UX, too,” said Jack. “If I go in and have the AI try to do something our customers might do and it can’t figure it out, then our customers aren’t going to be able to do it either. So Rainforest gives us a way to not only test our implementation, but also our design.” 

• Automatic tests with results pushed directly to Slack
  The testing process is so much smoother with Rainforest QA. Now, more than 70 manual tests are automated and whenever the team releases a staging branch, the test runs automatically with results pushed back to Slack, saving even more time in communicating issues. 

Results & ROI

In just 8 months, HappyDoc has used Rainforest to see results like: 

→ 0 new headcount, training, or payroll costs
Rainforest offered exactly what Jack was looking for in a new QA process. “It’s a solution that doesn’t require me to hire new headcount, no training involved, and no additional payroll. It’s just so much easier,” said Jack. 

→ 70 manual QA tests replaced with automation over 6 months

Saving at least 70 minutes every week, the team has used Rainforest to automate 70 manual QA tests. “Every new release requires fewer tests because QA has it covered,” said Jack.

‍→ 80-90% test coverage
With Rainforest, the team’s coverage sits between 80-90%, a rate that Jack never saw at any of his other career stops. “We’ve more or less run out of things to get coverage on,” said Jack. “Our regression is done, and I never got to that place at any other company.”

I don’t know that there is a better option than Rainforest. I wouldn’t recommend the classic approach to testing to anyone. Between the time savings, resource availability, and other benefits, Rainforest QA isn’t just a platform, it’s a QA team in a box.