Read-only Support end users

Please give a quick overview of your product feature request or feedback and note who in your org is affected by this issue [ex. agents, admins, customers, etc.]. (2-3 sentences)

I would like the ability to have “read-only” users in an organization who can view tickets, but not add comments or create their own tickets. Other org users should still be able to comment on eachother's tickets

What problem do you see this solving? (1-2 sentences) 

This is a business problem for us. We sell support access by seats, but would like to be able to provide “read-only” access to contract holders without them consuming a seat.

When was the last time you were affected by this lack of functionality, or specific tool? What happened? How often does this problem occur and how does this impact your business? (3-4 sentences)

This is an ongoing issue and is causing manual identification of read-only users. There is an impression that Zendesk might not meet our business needs without this feature.

Are you currently using a workaround to solve this problem? (If yes, please explain) (1-2 sentences)

We are having to provide free access to support without being able to monitor systematically our customer in violation of “read-only" user agreements. The other workaround would mean limiting everyone in the org from being able to comment on their colleagues tickets.

[Workaround is a “read-only” custom user field that is used in trigger to prevent user from opening ticket, and restricting the organization so users cannot add comments on org tickets]

What would be your ideal solution to this problem? How would it work or function? (1-2 sentences)

Ideally, there would be a user option that would override the “Can view all org tickets and add comments” organization setting.
Without this, if we could trigger off commenter's fields, we could set some alerts/messaging.