Stephen Lynn

The Risks Associated with SaaS

People tend to follow trends, and certainly the trend towards SaaS is growing. There is a lot of positives associated with on-demand applications, no doubt, but just like other similarly “can’t miss” opportunities (such as Bernard Madoff or Allen Stanford for investments), companies need to be aware of the risks associated with SaaS. Some of these have been highlighted previously, such as losing control of your data, or the long-term costs associated with SaaS are often higher than perpetual licenses, but one that hasn’t got as much attention should...
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Permalink: Friday, June 26, 2009 10:28 AM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under CRM, customer service and support
Customer Survey – Don’t Ask Unless You Really Want to Know

I recently spent a week-end at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas. It was a lovely week-end, the staff was fabulous, we had a great room, and the restaurant was superb. About a week after our stay I received an email from the hotel asking me to complete a survey about our stay. I completed the survey and told them about one problem we had at the hotel. I thought it was important for them to know, and I even filled out the section where it asked if I wanted someone to contact me so I could elaborate on the issue. This is where their customer service broke...
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Permalink: Thursday, June 18, 2009 4:46 PM
Posted by slynn | 3 Comments
Filed under customer service and support
Jeremy Miller Travels the World to Speak at Norwegian Developers Conference 2009

It wasn’t enough that Jeremy Miller, Dovetail Software’s chief software architect, has spent a lot of his time participating in the technical community in the United States; now, he has taken his knowledge overseas to Norway. Jeremy will be speaking at the Norwegian Developers Conference this week in Oslo. For those of you who live in that part of the world and can participate in the conference, you are lucky as the conference has a really interesting agenda and a great list of speakers. Thanks Jeremy for taking your time to spread your knowledge...
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Permalink: Monday, June 15, 2009 4:33 PM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, Agile Development, Agile
Good Technology Does Not Guarantee Good Customer Service

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...
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Permalink: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 4:27 PM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, CRM, customer service and support
Contribution to the .NET Developers’ Community

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
Permalink: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 6:27 PM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, CRM software development, Agile Development
Is Customer Service and Support Still the “Forgotten Space”?

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....
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Permalink: Friday, May 15, 2009 11:52 AM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under forgotten space, CRM, customer service and support
Customer Service to be Proud Of

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...
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Permalink: Sunday, April 19, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, customer service and support
Record 1st Quarter Through Superior Customer Service

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...
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Permalink: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 6:11 PM
Posted by slynn | 1 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, Clarify user, CRM, customer service and support
Dovetail Software Expands Customer Support Services

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...
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Permalink: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 3:28 PM
Posted by slynn | 0 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, CRM, customer service and support
Maybe Amdocs Should Call Dovetail for Clarify Support

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...
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Permalink: Monday, February 16, 2009 6:29 PM
Posted by slynn | 1 Comments
Filed under Dovetail Software, Clarify user, CRM, customer service and support

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