What Changed
Customer communications shifted from inconsistent and potentially duplicated messaging to a controlled, reliable system where each event produces a single, accurate notification.
Where They Started
Super Star Car Wash required a system to deliver operational notifications tied to billing events, membership changes, and account updates. These communications are essential to maintaining transparency with customers and ensuring smooth account lifecycle management.
What Was Breaking
The primary challenge was the risk of duplicate notifications caused by repeated records, processing backlogs, and inconsistencies in upstream data. Without proper safeguards, customers could receive multiple messages for the same event, leading to confusion and increased support inquiries.
How The Zig Fixed It
The Zig designed an event-driven processing system using Microsoft Fabric pipelines, integrating backend APIs to handle notification delivery.
At the core of the solution was a deduplication mechanism that evaluates incoming records and ensures that only one notification is generated per event, regardless of how many duplicate entries are present in the data stream.
The system was integrated with SendGrid and Twilio to handle email and SMS delivery, with monitoring introduced to track delivery success rates and ensure reliability over time.
What It Unlocked
The client gained a communication system that is both scalable and predictable, ensuring customers receive timely updates without duplication. This reduced confusion, improved customer experience, and lowered the operational burden on support teams.
Where the Investment Went
Effort was concentrated in backend API development, data pipeline design, and integration with third-party messaging platforms. Additional investment was made in monitoring and validation to ensure consistent delivery performance.
What This Taught Us
Event-driven systems must be designed with idempotency as a core principle. Without it, even well-structured pipelines can produce unintended duplication.
It also reinforced that customer-facing systems require stricter safeguards than internal processes, as even minor inconsistencies can have a visible impact.
