Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

GitLab's been good for our company, having it all under one roof has been nice.

But recently I've had (and continue to have... still not resolved) a pretty unpleasant experience with their support software. It just seems like the typical comedy of errors where a series of software integration papercuts between them and Zendesk adds up to a really bad experience, made much worse by the fact that our issue hasn't been fixed which is making us more stressed.

I am a member of multiple Gitlab groups and owner of one. I am simply not able to log in to the support portal to leave a ticket. Then I replied to a zendesk ticket and then somehow I get this message about support entitlement. I mean why not just speak in English? Why use terms like "Support Entitlement" – just say, which org/group are you with? Or just look me up in your database. An email address is unique. So that's confusing.

This roundabout has caused us to spend days and days just to reactivate an account that was locked out due to 2fa (not Gitlab's fault). We haven't even gotten to actually solving the problem. We're stuck on basically "I don't know who you are from your email address so you need to tell me who you are" even though I'm using the owner email address for that account.

I'm sure Gitlab's support TEAM must be great, but it fails spectacularly due to what seems to be flawed Zendesk <-> Gitlab integration itself. Please fix this guys, I know you're on top of everything else. It just feels like a forgotten set of tools.

Why can't I just SSO using my GitLab credentials into Zendesk?

Thanks, I’ve shared this feedback with members of our support team.

Not directly relevant, but I've had all sorts of issues, similar in nature, with other companies that use Zendesk and integrations with Zendesk. It seems surprisingly bad given its popularity.

Hi @atonse - I'm a Senior Manager at GitLab Support. I appreciate you taking the time to put together your feedback. I'm happy to discuss the particularities of your support experience if you send me an email at lkozloff[at]gitlab.com

There's a couple of general points though that I'd love to comment on.

> Why can't I just SSO using my GitLab credentials into Zendesk?

I'd love to have this as well - it makes complete sense (especially for our SaaS customers - it wouldn't help as much for self-managed). In order to get it implemented we need GitLab.com to become a SAML or JSON Web Token source. We have an open feature request for that here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/238419

Even with that implemented we'd still have some challenges identifying who should be getting support without occasionally asking for proof of a support contract. As you said, you're part of multiple GitLab groups. It's well possible that some of those are on our Free tier and others on Paid tiers. In some contexts you'd be eligible for Support, and in others you might not be.

Usually this speed bump only hits the first time you contact support. Once you've opened a ticket we'll have you linked up correctly.

Recently I've been working on improving contact management and making sure customers are aware of what they can do to make their first support ticket the best experience it can be. You can track that effort in https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/support/-/epics/156

> Why use terms like "Support Entitlement" – just say, which org/group are you with?

We have to consider both our self-managed customers and SaaS customers with our language. For GitLab.com customers naming a path completely works (and is one of the ways you can prove your entitlement: https://about.gitlab.com/support/managing-support-contacts.h...). For Self-managed we have to map account names exactly and need a bit more as some organizations have visibility of tickets between users, in which there may be sensitive data.

I think you're right that it could sound more human. I've opened up https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/-/is... to discuss improvements.

If you have any thoughts, feel free to participate!

Thank you for your really detailed and thoughtful response (not surprising coming from your company). Someone did reach out to me and this might get resolved after all this got escalated.

I'll keep an eye on these issues and will reach out at some point. The support entitlement stuff is more about just using plain English language. Most users don't know what that means. I'm the owner of the org and I barely know what that means.

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