Laplante management

Optimization may begin with an Audit, a Workflow Walkthrough (which consists of two 90-minute calls with your key stakeholders and both a Project Manager and Technical Architect from our team), or you may already know the specific items you’d like us to address.

Click here to schedule with one of our optimization experts!

There are two ways this can go:

If you aren’t sure exactly what you need, the best approach is to meet with our team to talk through your tech stack and workflows. 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 optimization 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.

If you know what you’re looking to get done, we can skip the discovery phase and provide you directly with a quote for the work you’d like us to accomplish.

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. So, below are fixed-price packages that can be purchased.

It is possible for a custom optimization to cost less than these packages, or land somewhere in between. If, after completing an initial discovery call or 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 only needs to optimize very narrow or specific areas of Zendesk, we’ll want to discuss a more streamlined approach. On the other hand, if you plan to optimize many workflows for multiple departments, 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!

If you have a specific need that is not listed below, we’re still interested!

Click here to set up some time to talk through what you’re looking for!

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

• Total number of channels (email, phone, chat, social media, etc.)
  • If you already have the channels you need in place, you can expect things to be cheaper and faster. If you want a million new 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 optimization if you have a diverse set of new 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.
  • 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 prior to work beginning.
• 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 optimization, we would love to help.

Schedule a meeting any time!