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Tag: Stephen Lynn

The CRM Media Just Won’t Give Customer Service & Support Any Respect

September 15, 2008 Why do I say this? Because I constantly see what the CRM media focuses on and how the executives within companies treat their customer service and support organizations. It is a sad commentary about how the CRM media treats what is still the largest segment (according to Gartner) of CRM – Customer Service & Support (CSS). And if the media, and the analysts who work with the media, won’t give them any attention, why do we believe that company executives will. Let me cite two recent examples. destinationCRM did a Best Practices on Mobile CRM. Since we are in process of rolling out our mobile application for CSS, I was very interested in reading what they had to say. However, I was very disappointed. It was 6 examples of how CRM vendors are solving the mobile needs of customers and…

Our People Make the Difference

June 20, 2008 Our goal is to provide the best software possible to our customers and even better customer support. To do that, you need the right people – those dedicated to serving the customer and committed to advancing their own knowledge, often on their own time. That is the culture we have created at Dovetail Software, and I am quite proud of all our employees.   Our employees are constantly reading, networking, and chatting with leading-edge technologists to make sure they are up to speed on what is driving the industry and to improve their own knowledge. Within Dovetail, we call this “self educate”. I thought I would start publicizing some of what are people are doing to achieve this, and I wanted to start with our newest employee, Jeremy Miller, who is our Chief Software Architect.   We are very fortunate…

Dovetail Seeker to the Rescue

June 6, 2008 In canvassing the Dovetail and Clarify community on their needs and wishes, one area that continually comes up is a better search capability. Users fall into two camps. The first group has muddled through using Fulcrum or Hummingbird, and is extremely frustrated by its limitations and complexity. The second group attempted to use Fulcrum or Hummingbird, but gave up and now uses nothing. Well, we have the answer - Dovetail Seeker.   Dovetail Seeker is a simple to use search tool that mimics much of what we have all come to love about Google. It allows users to search either the Dovetail or Clarify database. The power of Seeker is that it works for simple basic search in an easy to use Google-like text box, or for more powerful users, it has advanced search capabilities and queries, much like Google…

The Forgotten Space Continues (Unfortunately)

May 19, 2008 I recently read an article that announced an expansion of the relationship between SAP and RIM (owners of the Blackberry) SAP + RIM = CRM2Go. The writer states,             “As a result of what one SAP executive called "co-innovation," a version of the latest SAP CRM software has been rebuilt to natively integrate with the BlackBerry.”   Since we have also been working on a remote capability of our CRM product utilizing Twitter, I read the article with interest, seeking to learn anything that might improve our solution. I also checked out the RIM press release, SAP and RIM Usher In a New Era for Enterprise Mobility, hoping to learn more. What did I learn – That the Forgotten Space is still Forgotten. Let me explain.   This appears to be a big announcement for the two firms, but in…

Customer Satisfaction – Saved by a Technicality

May 8, 2008 Maybe I am missing the goals airlines are trying to achieve with their frequent flyer programs. I thought they were trying to attract loyalty among their frequent fliers and recognize them with a few extra perks (besides free trips), like boarding the plane first, or having your own phone number for service. I guess what I was asking for in return for my loyalty was too much. Let me explain. I just attended the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) Conference in Santa Clara. Ironically, at this conference I listened for two days about best practices companies deploy to provide superior customer support and satisfaction, and here I am writing about a negative experience with my preferred carrier, American Airlines. I was supposed to visit a customer in the San Francisco area, so I booked my return flight out of…

Swim Naked or Provide Good Customer Service in Bad Times

May 2, 2008 While the U.S. suffers through declining home prices and rising unemployment, the Nero's of economics are tuning up their fiddles while trying to determine if we're technically in a recession. Forbes reported this week that,"Regardless of the GDP numbers, data show unambiguous signs of a struggling economy. For homeowners watching prices drop, for the newly unemployed or for businesses with low corporate profits, the current debate over whether the economy is in recession is largely meaningless. What these people want to know is simple: When will it end?"Consumers, apparently worried about rising food and oil prices, are losing hope, canceling vacations and being more careful with their money, as seen in Consumer Confidence Index's drop for the fourth straight month in a row. "Economists closely watch sentiment readings since consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation's economic…

Customer Service – The Right Way and the Wrong Way

April 16, 2008 Being in the business of selling CRM software utilized by customer service and support organizations, I am constantly observing the way companies support their customers. Let’s look at two companies in action. I stay in a particular hotel frequently and know many of the staff.  As I walked into the lobby last week, I noticed a car with a flat tire parked in one of the handicapped parking spaces. An elderly couple was standing outside their car chatting with the front desk manager while the maintenance man from the hotel was changing the flat tire for this couple. This isn’t a 4 star hotel where you might assume this service would be provided; yet, this was a hotel going out of their way to provide superior customer service. Contrast this with a large unnamed bank I do business with who…

Take Care of Your Customers

March 27, 2008 We had a recent incident that I think speaks towards Dovetail’s approach to providing superior customer service. One of our newer customers was doing some custom development work utilizing our Dovetail CRM product and they ran into a situation where they were stuck. So they contacted their sales person via an email and inquired about whether they could purchase consulting services to help them complete their customizations. The typical salesperson approach, and a company only worried about the almighty dollar, would have immediately taken the order and booked the revenue. Not Dovetail. The salesperson called the customer and asked some questions. Once he understood the customer’s need, he recalled another customer faced a similar situation which Gary Sherman had solved. He also remembered that Gary had written a blog post highlighting that customer’s need and his solution. So the salesperson…

Single Vendor or “Best of Breed”

March 26, 2008 I have talked to a number of companies who have been analyzing their current enterprise software systems structure. Their struggle - Utilize a single vendor to provide all of the enterprise’s needs or choose a "best of breed" approach. Complicating this analysis is that there is a further debate between using a single CRM vendor for all of a company's CRM needs vs utilizing a “best of breed” approach to the various CRM requirements. I might add, this isn't a new debate; it is one that goes back probably a decade or more. I have found the proponents pretty well split down the middle although there have been shifts in momentum tilting more towards one approach vs the other. Early on, many companies jumped on the bandwagon focused on one vendor utilizing one central system. While this concept is great in…

Dovetail Providing Clarify Help – Is it a Risk?

February 14, 2008 I wish I could take credit for all the ideas I communicate, but I can’t, and I have our customers to thank for many of the good ideas we get. We’re lucky that our customers take such an interest in helping us. On a recent trip, I visited a prospect in the morning and we were discussing the possibility of Dovetail taking over their Amdocs support. The senior executive was concerned about the “what if?”. Specifically, “While we may save money from moving our support to Dovetail, what if we have a “real” problem. You don’t have the Amdocs source code, so what if you can’t solve the problem. We won’t be able to go back to Amdocs.” We talked about his concern, and I tried to put his mind at ease, speaking towards our ability to find a workaround…