Customer Service – Is it the Technology or the People?
I love great debates, Coke or Pepsi, boxers or briefs, or how about the most recent one, Did the Miami Heat choke or Did the Dallas Mavericks win it? (I’m bias since I live in Dallas and love the Mavericks.) Another one that is ongoing is, What makes for great Customer Service, is it the Technology or the People? I have written before on this subject, and we at Dovetail think about this issue on two levels. One is like anyone else providing Customer Service to their customers, and the other is as a provider of Customer Service software, and for us, the line between the two often blur.
I recently read a blog post on this subject written by Esteban Kolsky, called Guess What Customer Relationship Management is All About? Esteban is part of the team putting on the upcoming event, CRM Idol that Dovetail is participating in, and as part of the qualification process, companies had to provide three references. Among the global findings of Esteban’s approximate 160 reference checks, he found:
“The number one reason references said they would continue to do work with a vendor was the team on the vendor side, attention to the client’s needs, and quick action to solve problems. In other words, the person-to-person relationship. True, this is a very tiny segment of the world, but if you think about it – what do your customers rave about when they give you good marks? Your technology – or your people?”
Just think of how good your vendor would be if they provided both. So it got me thinking, “Where does Dovetail rate with its people and our technology?” Let’s start with the most important area – our people. I love to talk about Dovetail’s people, and more importantly, we love for our prospects to talk to our customers about our people. Because we shine. Our people live to make our customers successful. They have few barriers in what they are allowed to do to help our customers achieve success. And boy, are they quick. While we have SLAs, they’re irrelevant to us because our people are all over issues well in advance of any SLA. We just jump on issues and solve them.
And just like our people, our technology is top-notch. We don’t believe in hiring just good developers; rather, we look for those individuals who are constantly upping their skills, what we call self-learning. They are all involved in the development community, contributing, and often leading. And our development philosophy goes back to the client’s needs, we build our software to be easy to use and easy to maintain. Just take a look at one of our whitepapers, Upgrade Safe Customizations for a great example.
So step back and think about your operations on two levels – how good is your technology and do you empower your people to truly serve the needs of your customers?
Until Next Time,
Stephen
