Enable trial extension for gitlab.com groups

to be promoted to epic once gitlab-com/gl-infra/production#3111 (closed) is resolved

Problem summary

As a customer, when I am wrapping up my renewal order with sales, I want to extend my current trial on my namespace so that I don't lose service before the order is complete.

As an account manager, when I'm in the process of closing a deal with a customer, I want to ask the customer to extend their GL trial, so we can buy more time for the deal to be completed.

(Person, situation, expected outcome)

Target audience

Customer + Sales team

Suggested solution

Implement a mechanism whereby the customer is able to extend their trial on gitlab.com.

The extension will be a one-time extension of x days - final guidelines should be confirmed by legal and sales(?)

Some guidelines already discussed in this issue.

Additional context:

Currently Support serves internal requests from sales to extend trial and change the plan of the trial. These requests take time from Sales to initiate and from Support to fulfill. In some cases, Support is not able to complete the request without escalating the task to a support engineer with console access (console access requires training to be completed and not very many engineers have the access). Because of the possible complications, the extension request could take days to complete.

Volume of requests:

  1. Trial extension requests per month Total: 552 • Avg/Month: 40

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

  1. Customer is able to extend a trial when needed
  2. Sales no longer needs to create internal requests to facilitate the extension (sales efficiency)
  3. As a result, Support takes on fewer internal requests (support efficiency)
  4. Less console intervention in our code (data integrity)

Links / references

ROI

  • IACV
  • Cost Reduction
  • Sales Efficiency (saves up to 2 days for each request)
  • Other (data integrity)
  • Support Efficiency
  1. Data integrity + synchronisation is maintained as there should be less console action required than there is now
  2. Huge efficiency win for support, saving hours for 40+ issues per month to serve these requests
  3. More agency for sales to serve customers quickly and control trial offer within specific trial rules (compliance built-into controls)
  4. More visibility into who, why and what we are requiring trials for. We want to understand why trials have to be extended or changed so that we can potentially better solve for any issues in this area. We can answer questions like: what's the most common reason for extension? What market segment requires more changes to trials and why?

Iterations:

  1. Happy path: Extend existing, active trial - one time extension for 30 days #290278 (closed)
  2. Trial expiry should unlink namespace and no further extensions should be possible
  3. Check whether trial was previously extended
  4. Create mechanism to reactivate a trial for 30 days #290279 (closed)
  5. Be able to select trial extension period (1 week, 2 weeks, 30 days)
  6. Be able to switch the trial off / cancel the trial

Considerations:

  • What happens when namespace is on a subscription and customer wants to switch to a trial?
  • Look into issue where trial end date downgrades namespace even when namespace is on active subscription
Edited by Donique Smit