Upgrade to Zendesk Enterprise - feature and cost comparison
This issue is to make the case for GitLab to upgrade to Zendesk Enterprise plan.
We are currently on the Professional Plan ($59 per agent per month list price) with 'Productivity Pack' addon ($25 per agent per month list price): Total is $84 per agent per month list price
Features in Zendesk Enterprise that will be beneficial to GitLab
The features below are in addition to the features we currently have on the Professional Plan:
- Sandbox test environment - allows us to improve views, triggers and automations and test in a safe environment. Very valuable to allow iteration and improvement of process without risk in a live customer environment.
- Multi brand: will enable Community Advocates who currently have a separate Zendesk instance to use one shared instance with full separation from Support but easy transferring of tickets.
- Multiple business hours: allows for different teams and regions to set business hours relevant for customer needs
- Custom roles and permissions: Allows flexility to assign relevant permissions (improve integrity of the system by reducing number of admins)
- Hourly report / insight data refresh (it's currently daily) - allows for better responsiveness to ongoing trends.
- Audit Logs - enable insight into changes to system (e.g. trigger updates) to help troubleshoot issues.
- Skills based routing: Not something we would use immediately but as the team grows and specialisation increase this will become valuable.
Cost implications
Option 1 - Just Enterprise
To include the same features we currently have and the additional features listed above, list price is: $99 per agent per month. So that's a $15 per month agent increase. Assuming 45 agents that's an annual increase of $8,100. (The 'Productivity Pack is included with Enterprise so is not needed as an add-on.)
Option 2 - Enterprise + Light agents and Side Conversations add-on
The Light Agents feature allows anyone at GitLab to have a special limited 'Agent' account so they can sign into Zendesk and view tickets. The limitation is that they can only leave 'internal notes' and not 'public replies'. This is a very useful feature since everyone at GitLab can then easily help Support with tickets and see customer issues without needing to use a shared account. This helps cross-team collaboration. Light agent accounts are unlimited in number.
Another feature that comes with Light Agents is Side Conversations which also has great potential value to improve ticket resolution effectiveness.
These features are included in the 'Collaboration' add-on which is approx $25 per agent per month making a total of $124 per agent per month. An annual increase of $21,600 for 45 agents.
For a full comparison of features see: https://www.zendesk.com/support/compare/#compare