Laplante management

Every implementation begins with a Workflow Walkthrough, which consists of two 90-minute calls with the key stakeholders from your side, and a Project Manager and Technical Architect from our team.

We’re trying to capture two things from these calls:

– What your tech stack looks like (whether you want to integration with Zendesk or not, it is critical that we understand what software systems your team will be using)

– What the process looks like from when a ticket comes into the system to “Thanks so much, that was a great experience.” As you describe the steps you’d like to follow, we’ll translate that into what it means in Zendesk (Triggers, Automations, Macros, SLAs, etc.).

For an advanced implementation that involves multiple departments/workflows, additional Workflow Walkthrough calls will likely be necessary.

Click here to schedule with one of our implementation experts!

After completing the Workflow Walkthrough calls, we’ll send you a proposal with a range of hours and dollar costs based on the complexity of what we all have agreed is the process you’d like to put in place. Additional deliverables include a slide deck with our notes from the Workflow Walkthrough, as well as a visual representation of each of your workflows. At that point, you’ll have the option to accept the proposal as is and have us begin the implementation immediately, or choose specific items to be eliminated, moved to a later phase, or completed by your internal team. We’re happy to work with you to fit whatever budget you have, just know that if it requires less than our proposal, we’re going to need to determine must-haves vs nice-to-haves together.

Keep in mind, we will only ever charge for the hours we actually spend!

Our strong preference is to avoid fixed-price contracts, because we’re convinced that it is a zero sum game where someone wins and someone loses. If we get to set the price, we’ll probably win. And we don’t want to start the relationship that way! However, we understand that sometimes budgeting requires a fixed cost, and at a minimum, this will help you understand ballpark pricing.

Below are fixed-price packages that can be purchased. It is possible for a custom implementation to cost less than these packages, or land somewhere in between. If, after completing the Workflow Walkthrough, we believe we will exceed the maximum hours allotment for the package purchased, our team will work with you to establish an appropriate scope of work and cost.

If your company expects to implement 10 or fewer agents and/or will have very light volume and simple workflows, we’ll want to discuss a more streamlined approach. On the other hand, if you plan to implement with more than 100 agents, trying to fit into a fixed price bucket still rarely makes sense, for different reasons. In both of these cases, we would still love to work with you, we just need you to schedule a call with us so we can talk things through and find the right solution for you!

There are four factors that will most often cause implementation cost and timing to fluctuate:

• Total number of channels (email, phone, chat, social media, etc.)
  • If you only want email/webform, you can expect things to be cheaper and faster. If you want a million different channels, it’s likely to increase both cost and timing.
• Total number of departments/workflows
  • Having a lot of agents who do the same thing doesn’t necessarily complicate the configuration of your system. But segregating tickets based on department and/or type of ticket will. Be prepared for a longer, more expensive implementation if you have a diverse set of processes that need to be configured.
• Integration with external systems

  • Zendesk has out-of-the-box integration (most often via a prebuilt sidebar app) with hundreds of popular software systems. You can find the complete list here. If you just want to know our favorites, here are companies we’ve partnered with directly

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  • So long as the software you’re looking to integrate has an open API, we will be able to put it together with Zendesk. Depending on the specific needs, it may be that we involve a simple middleware like Zapier or Power Automate, but that discussion is one to have with our team during the Workflow Walkthrough.
• Meetings
  • We only bill for 1 of our staff in the Workflow Walkthrough, but for any additional meetings, we will charge for each person who attends from our side. So choose wisely when including multiple staff! There are times when it will be more efficient to have 2 or more people join, and we’re always open to it, but don’t want there to be surprises from a cost standpoint.

If you have additional questions about implementation, we would love to help.

Schedule a meeting any time!