Full disclosure: I am currently an engineer at Seneca Systems and an ex-engineer of Zendesk, which I loved :)
From my experience, Zendesk is a private sector-oriented customer relationship platform with communications at its core. The relationship between local government and their constituents doesn't look like the private sector relationship between customer service department and customer (though this comparison is frequently made). A customer service rep needs to answer, respond, and pass along... But in government, a worker has to actually get the work done.
The relationship between government and constituent isn't a sales relationship, it is a services one, and it's in the service request management area that workers are really suffering. The communication is only important insofar as it becomes a unit of work for the government to deliver on... A pothole, for example, or a streetlight issue. They struggle with geolocation and the need for mapping, the ability to visualize community issue trends and seeing them as they happen rather than when the shoe falls, FOIA requests, and more. These things are highly specific to government, and not really addressable by a generic private sector solution no matter how customizable.
As a result, in Romulus managing the constituent communications is only the first piece of the puzzle. In my opinion, the real value Seneca provides is in the service request management, which takes the communication and tracks the unit of work that comes from it internally, as well as providing the ability to communicate the progress externally as Zendesk does.
This reminds me of some threads about the difference between Slack and IRC. Could one be dramatically retrofitted to accomplish what the other does? Sure, but it wouldn't do it well, and people aren't looking for it to do that.
From my experience, Zendesk is a private sector-oriented customer relationship platform with communications at its core. The relationship between local government and their constituents doesn't look like the private sector relationship between customer service department and customer (though this comparison is frequently made). A customer service rep needs to answer, respond, and pass along... But in government, a worker has to actually get the work done.
The relationship between government and constituent isn't a sales relationship, it is a services one, and it's in the service request management area that workers are really suffering. The communication is only important insofar as it becomes a unit of work for the government to deliver on... A pothole, for example, or a streetlight issue. They struggle with geolocation and the need for mapping, the ability to visualize community issue trends and seeing them as they happen rather than when the shoe falls, FOIA requests, and more. These things are highly specific to government, and not really addressable by a generic private sector solution no matter how customizable.
As a result, in Romulus managing the constituent communications is only the first piece of the puzzle. In my opinion, the real value Seneca provides is in the service request management, which takes the communication and tracks the unit of work that comes from it internally, as well as providing the ability to communicate the progress externally as Zendesk does.
This reminds me of some threads about the difference between Slack and IRC. Could one be dramatically retrofitted to accomplish what the other does? Sure, but it wouldn't do it well, and people aren't looking for it to do that.