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Tag: Stephen Lynn

Good Technology Does Not Guarantee Good Customer Service

June 2, 2009 I recently took my car in to the dealership for a warranty issue. The service rep greeted me when I arrived, made sure I had a loaner car, and my car repair was completed when promised. So a successful visit, right? Wrong. As I was driving home, the same problem developed. I called the service rep, he apologized, and arranged for me to return at a later date.  But then it got interesting. Two days later I got an email from the dealership. Take a look:   Dear Stephen, First of all, thank you for bringing your vehicle in for service at xxx. As a preferred xxx customer, our goal is to provide you with outstanding customer treatment that extends beyond the purchase of your vehicle.  If for some reason you were not completely satisfied with your service experience, please…

Contribution to the .NET Developers’ Community

May 20, 2009 At Dovetail Software we have created a culture where our employees are encouraged to get involved in the community and where we are continually seeking to advance our skills through on the job learning and self-education. As a result, our developers are often invited to speak at conferences or write articles for publications. Chad Myers, our head of Development, recently wrote an article for CoDe Magazine on Relational Database Persistence with NHibernate. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks Chad! Until Next Time, Stephen

Is Customer Service and Support Still the “Forgotten Space”?

May 15, 2009 A couple of years ago, Dovetail Software coined Customer Service and Support (CS&S) CRM as the Forgotten Space. It was our belief that CS&S was being ignored by the vendors and senior level executives. From the vendors, more R&D dollars were being put into the more glamorous areas, like Sales Force Automation and Analytics. And senior executives, despite shouting about the importance of providing great Customer Service, saw this function as a cost center, where the goal is to reduce costs as much as possible without alienating customers. Let’s revisit this subject and see how we’re doing. We just came back from the Service & Support Professional (SSPA) Conference in Santa Clara last week. Just as I noticed the first time I went to the SSPA expo two years ago, most of the major CS&S CRM vendors didn’t participate. Of…

Customer Service to be Proud Of

April 19, 2009 I love my company, Dovetail Software, and the culture we have created. It seems a little self-serving to brag about ourselves, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity this time. We have a number of mottoes in the company, and one of them is “Just Do It.” I admit we stole this from Nike, but I don’t think they will object to the fact that we find it fits our company. So now for the situation. We had a support case come in Saturday night during our non-business hours from one of our customers. First, the customer hadn’t purchased 24x7 coverage from us. Second, they designated it as a Severity High, which is a severity level requiring immediate attention. It shouldn’t have been a High Severity as the problem was in the customer’s test environment. Even with all that, Kevin Miller had…

Record 1st Quarter Through Superior Customer Service

April 8, 2009 In one of our recent blog posts we wrote about how important great customer service is to keeping your current customers during these difficult times. Our just completed first quarter speaks towards the importance of great customer service. We had a record first quarter for Dovetail Software. Customer Service had a lot to do with this. First, we had a 100% renewal rate with all our current customers. Added on top of this, we secured a number of new support customers from one of our competitors. Why were we able to achieve this? Two reasons: 1) We offer great customer service (in fact, superior to our competition) at a lower price; and 2) This competitor (I will refrain from naming them) doesn’t care about their customers. Let me elaborate. Our philosophy in our company is to do whatever it takes…

Dovetail Software Expands Customer Support Services

February 18, 2009 We pride ourselves on our customer service. We walk the talk. Towards that end, and taking our customer service to another level, we are offering two additional services to our Dovetail support package. First, in an effort to bring a tighter link between our customers and Dovetail support personnel, and to ensure customers always have a point person they can turn to with any of their support needs, Dovetail is assigning a Service Account Manager (SAM) to each of our customers.  The company will continue to provide its top quality support and allow customers to contact Dovetail for support via whatever means is most convenient for our customer, but the company wants to make sure if there are any questions, our customers have a person to turn to. Second, as part of our annual support, Dovetail will provide a three day…

Maybe Amdocs Should Call Dovetail for Clarify Support

February 16, 2009 Last week, I blogged  about a recent support issue an Amdocs customer was facing. They had contacted Amdocs, but couldn’t get assistance. We helped the customer solve the problem even though we have no support agreement with that customer. Well, we are at it again. Last week, Jorge posed a question on ITtoolbox for the Clarify experts. Seems Jorge “tried Amdocs' tech support but they said it would require an enhancement ($$$) of their doing.” Not content to have another Amdocs customer go away unhappy, Gary Sherman solved Jorge’s issue. You can see the full exchange , but as you can see below, Jorge got the answer he was looking for: Reply from jcruz1965 on 2/16/2009 10:32 AM “Hi Gary,I was able to squeeze on some time on Friday and implement your fix in our development system. Worked flawlessly. I now…

Dovetail Rescues Another Amdocs Customer

February 11, 2009 How often do you hear how important customer support is to a company? Furthermore, how often do you also hear that “We provide world class support”? Phrases used often by companies. We at Dovetail also believe we provide “world class support”, but we also believe that Actions Speak Louder than Words. Therefore, I always like examples where we can back-up this claim with Actions; even better when this support is provided to an Amdocs customer who can’t get satisfaction from Amdocs, but we at Dovetail are able to help. This week at ITToolbox, an Amdocs customer posed a question  about Auto Closing a Part Request. At one point through the forum exchange, the questioner goes on to say,                 “When i posed the question to Amdocs i got that it was too complicated to do this.”   How’s that for…

Customer Service – Poor Execution or Customer’s Preference

October 15, 2008 There is an ongoing debate within the Support & Service industry as to why more CS&S issues aren't handled by means other than live agents. There are those who say that vendors haven't created the right solutions for customers to implement. There are others who claim that customers like to talk to live people, not machines. When I say machines, I am also including people utilizing technology, including self service, live chat, and emails, to name a few. Basically, anything but a live person. If you take the first position, you would believe there are opportunities for companies who solve the technology problem and provide better self service solutions. On the other hand, if you believe that people like to talk to humans, then the task ahead is to give the agents all the tools possible to improve the customer…

What do Dovetail Software Customers Think of Our Customer Service?

October 2, 2008 Scott Hornstein, co-author of the book Opt-In Marketing, recently penned A Novel Concept: What Do Customers Think of Customer Service? for Sales and Marketing Management and his column does indeed raise a somewhat novel concept. That is, he conducted a Q&A with the most important people in business, the customers to find out what they really think.Writes Mr. Hornstein, "We discuss CRM and customer service issues from a lofty position. We speak of strategies and processes and successes—the articles and case histories I find are largely congratulatory."What I don't find are articles and case studies reflecting what customers think. Are they equally as delighted? To find out, I thought I'd ask some customers how they feel about some of the basic issues." Among his survey respondents, Mr Hornstein finds the "report card is bad."As longtime proponents of customer service and…