Address Mechanizer use case: Extend the end date of an existing trial or plan
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- Why does the use case exist?
- The customer requires more time to trial GitLab features and isn't ready to purchase yet
- The sales process is taking longer than expected and a trial extension ensures the customer has access to GitLab features when a subscription is not active
- Is the function addressing a bug or a missing feature? (What need is this use case trying to address)
This use case is primarily driven by sales-related needs; tickets generated by web direct customers asking for a trial extension are not very prevalent.
The extension can secure a deal by providing a longer lead time for the initial selling process - insight from sales as to how the length of a trial impacts the sale could be useful to determine whether the 30 day length is hampering the sales process.
The extension also fills a gap in time from the trial to the provision of a subscription; or from a subscription end date to the renewed subscription start. Looking at the pipeline for a sales-assisted order, a lead would need trial GitLab, confirm their seat count for the order, negotiate the order with GL sales, possibly organise procurement for the sale from their finance team, get approvals and sign the deal all within 30 days in order to not lose functionality on their namespace. There is possibly a missing feature for this use case.
Extend plan vs trial
Example: the customer is on a paid plan and negotiating renewal, the paperwork is taking more time than expected so we could pro-actively extend their subscription for a few days.
As far as I understand if we create a trial for this extension we might limit some features like project keys.
Note: We use a trial to "extend" an existing subscription past the 14 day grace period so as not to touch the existing subscription information (avoiding data integrity issues).
Solution proposal
- Build out trial extension feature in customersdot