You may consider expanding Gladly when your company enters a new market, adding a new brand to support through Gladly, or maybe adding a new Channel(s) to expand your Support offerings. In these situations, it's good to understand the difference between keeping a single instance of Gladly and multiple instances to support your business expansion.
Considerations
Key considerations depend on the kind of expansion you're trying to achieve. Let's break down a couple of them.
Expand a current instance or implement a new one
Gladly is built to support multiple segments of a business (i.e., another brand, a new region). However, you may still consider implementing a new instance based on laws, policies, and business procedures you must comply with. Before you decide, it's important to understand the requirements and consequences of creating a separate instance.
Security & Data
When you have one instance, the native SSO applies to the entire instance for both Agent and end-user configurations. All users across all teams and regions would need to be configured in the SSO identity provider.
Organizations are global for the entire instance. It is not possible to segment organizations or view permissions by Agent Groups, Team Managers, or Administrators. When you have one instance, users such as the Administrator and Team Manager roles can access other regions' data, configurations, and settings. They will not be limited to just their region's info and configurations. For example, US leads or Administrators can access EU Inboxes, Conversations, phone call recordings, and emails.
Data Retention policies are set on the organization level and apply across your Gladly instance.
If different retention policies are required based on the region, then separate Gladly instances will be required.
Billing
If you need billing to be entirely separate from the original instance setup, separate instances may be required.
Reporting
If using one instance, reporting is centralized. All Conversation, Contact, User, and organization data is available to all users with access to reporting.
To run performance reports on individual regions, you will need to configure the reports by using the available filters on the report. These include filters like "Inbox," "Team," or "Entry Points."
Not all filters are available on all reports. Therefore, it is important to check and make sure the reports you need have the necessary filters that allow you to report on the regional level.
It is possible to create multiple Glad App instances within a single Gladly instance. Each Glad App instance can be used for regions with region-specific Quick actions. Today, Gladly's reports are not broken down by each Glad App instance. However, there may be ways you can tell the difference between the Quick Actions in the reporting via naming conventions.
If you require separate Quick Action reports by Glad App instances, a separate instance may be desired.
It is possible to create multiple Help Center instances within a single Gladly instance. Each Help Center instance can be used for specific regions. However, Gladly's reports are not broken down by each Help Center instance today.
If you want to report on Help Center Searches or Answer Usage reports at the individual Help Center level, then different Gladly Instances may be desired.
Expansion to new markets
Whether you're entering a new international market/geography/region or planning on adding a new brand to support through Gladly, below are key considerations to consider before proceeding with your expansion plans.
Which Channels (Voice, Email, SMS, Chat, Social) are you interested in leveraging for this new market/region?
Is there anything unique/different that may apply to this market regarding workflow vs. your current workflow?
Who will be staffing this new expansion? Will it be an existing team or a new team? Think about where you want to route work for your new geography
We usually recommend creating separate Inboxes for new geographies/regions so that you can pull reporting by geography/region. If you do not need to report separately, you have other configuration options, like using Skills or routing conversations to existing inboxes.
Once you have your new Entry Points, you must direct them to the appropriate inbox(es), either existing or new. If you have a new Inbox(es) you will need to assign either new or existing staff to that Inbox(es).
Summary
Here's a quick overview of the benefits and considerations of using one instance vs. multiple instances:
If you're using one Gladly instance across regions, benefits include:
Unified Customer experience.
Unified reporting.
Agent cost: Agents only require one license and can work across regions.
Cross-department escalations or tracking of issues are easier within one instance
Unified user management and authentication.
Single source of truth for users.
360 view of customers across regions.
Items to consider are:
Restricting access to Conversations and Contacts is complex.
Requires a defined change management process and strategy.
Increased complexity for routing and business rules.
Many instance features are globally configured (such as authentication).
If you're using multiple Gladly instances, benefits include:
Compartmentalization is easier.
Flexibility to make changes that do not risk impacting other teams.
Independent and fully customizable workflows, Glad App Instances, Answers, etc.
Control access & retention by region.
Separate billing.
Items to consider are:
Overhead cost for configuration and analytics for multiple instances.
Configuration of SSO, apps, and integrations required for all instances.
Agent collaboration complexity increases across two Gladly instances (if applicable).
If you determine that you want a separate instance rather than adding your expansion to your existing instance, please contact your CSM or contact Gladly Support who will put you in touch with the appropriate person on our sales team to discuss details and pricing.
Implementation
Below is information on how to support your expansion by activating and setting up new Channels.
Take advantage of Value Added Services
Expanding your offerings within Gladly is easy, as most of everything you need is self-serviceable. Still, we recommend taking advantage of our Value Added Services to make your expansion efforts as smooth and efficient as possible.
Launch Voice
Phone number options
Already have a phone number:
Activate a new toll-free or local number.
Include telephony fees (rate card) + monthly hosting charges
Build your IVR – Resources:
Gladly Connect Learning courses:
If new recordings are needed, see our sample script and popular professional voice vendor https://www.voicejockeys.com/
Launching on Email
Add new email address that contains information about:
How to add an Entry Point.
How to direct emails to the proper Inbox in Gladly and set SLA.
How to start forwarding emails from your current provider to Gladly.
Build your Answers before the launch.
Consider Audiences (to differentiate between brands, etc.).
Set up Business Hours + Auto-Reply Rule.
Launching on Chat
Chat Launch Checklist - Glad App Launch Checklist.
Launching on SMS
Be sure to set up an Auto Reply Rule for SMS. Consider using Business Hours for specific after-hours auto-replies.
When you're ready to launch, make sure to add information on your site to let your Customers know that they can contact you by SMS/text. If you have other Answers/auto-responses set up where you list your phone number as a way for your Customers to reach you, make sure you update those Answers to include info about SMS as well.
Launching on Social Channels
Support
If you get stuck along the way, please contact Gladly Support.
If you require further hands-on training or if you want our team to build (e.g., IVR) for you, please review our Value Added Services offerings.
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