Stephen Lynn

What Does it Take to Provide Superior Customer Service

slynn — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:21:00 GMT

I recently read a blog post on Why Small Companies Are Better at Customer Service by Anthony Tjan. In his post Tony points out,

“The key difference in these experiences is the common sense and empathy of the small local company. Too much customer service — especially in large companies — has devolved to standard operating procedures and scripted answers delivered with artificial calmness.”

I agree that the key differences Tony points out are critical, but they wouldn’t completely explain why companies provide good or bad customer service. It also takes the right culture within the company to ensure that customers are serviced well. We are all aware of Zappos and their unwavering focus on superior customer service. They aren’t a small company; yet, many companies attempt to emulate their customer service. So what is it about Zappos that makes it possible for a large company to provide fabulous customer service. IT’S THE CULTURE!

So let’s bring the thoughts from Tony’s blog post together with the importance of culture. In the end, it is the culture. That doesn’t mean that all small companies have a great culture and all large companies have a poor culture. The key around the size of the company is that it is easier to formulate a culture and execute it within a small company. Take Dovetail for instance. We approach customer service utilizing a slogan I stole from Nike – Just Do It. Our employees know they are empowered to do what they believe is necessary to satisfy the customer, in most cases with empathy and common sense. We don’t hide behind SLAs, SOPs, or other bureaucratic barriers; we find ways to make our customers successful. That doesn’t mean we always satisfy the customer, but in most cases, we do achieve our goal.

Let’s hope other companies pick up our motto towards customer service, especially as we approach Customer Service Week next week.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

Dovetail Software: Easy to Use - Ask our Customers

slynn — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:55:00 GMT

One of the reasons our customers move off of our competitors’ software is because it is easy to migrate from other solutions to Dovetail CRM. Our development staff thinks like customers, so they develop from the perspective of the customer, i.e., how to make their jobs easier. There is nothing like testimonials from our customers, so hear is our latest example.

Thanks for the kind words David.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

Value of Software Maintenance & Support

slynn — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:26:00 GMT

We pride ourselves on the value we provide our customers for maintenance and support, whether it is on our own software products, or on the Clarify software products we also support. I have written frequently about the level of service we provide, often citing customer examples to back up our claim.

We are often asked by customers who are considering switching to our Clarify Help Desk Program why we are better than Amdocs. Here’s what we highlight - First, Dovetail charges considerably less than Amdocs charges for support. In tough economic times, this is an important factor. We then talk about our customer service and how our customer support staff is top notch and the service they provide is fabulous (OK, I’m bias, but our references back us up). We go on to say how support cases are immediately handled by someone who can help them as opposed to our competition. But I have to admit, in explaining this to customers, we have missed a key element of the value of our support. Let me explain.

I was reading an article about Rimini Street recently, and they talked about how they offer support for Siebel, PeopleSoft, and SAP customers for half the price that the software vendors charge. Their CEO, Seth Ravin, went on to say that, ”Customer service at many enterprise software companies is the equivalent of bussing your own tables at McDonald's.” Rimini Street senior VP of global marketing and alliances Dave Rowe added :

"Like fast food restaurants, software vendors have trained users to solve their own issues rather than providing full service for the huge fees they charge .The reality of software vendor help desks, including multiple layers of people and escalations to get to a senior engineer with experience; training clients to believe it is acceptable to simply say a current issue is "fixed in the next release", and brushing off client issues with weak responses and excuses like "the manual says it was designed that way," forces customers to have to resolve their own issues."

Wow! Well said. I wish I had come up with that, but in the end I am just glad that someone did because it speaks very well to the differences between the support Dovetail provides to its customers and our competition. The competition’s goal in providing customer support is to try to find a way to make their customers solve their own problems, rather than provide the support their customers are paying good money for. We have seen this multiple times, especially via Toolbox for IT where Amdocs customers, frustrated with the lack of support they are getting from Amdocs, utilizes the forum to seek assistance. On the other hand, Dovetail’s goal in providing customer support is to make the customer successful by solving their problem. We have even helped those Amdocs customers who couldn’t get the help they needed from Amdocs, even though they aren’t Dovetail customers (read one of my prior blog posts).

We will continue to provide Value in our Maintenance and Support Programs and do whatever it takes to make our customers successful. Thanks Rimini Street for giving us additional ammunition to highlight our value.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

It's About Making the Customer Successful

slynn — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:37:00 GMT

We have been accused of providing consulting work for free and it is an accusation I am quite proud of. While we are certainly in business to make money, it isn’t all about getting every last dollar from your customers. Take care of your customers, make sure they are successful, and ultimately you will achieve financial success. That is the Dovetail way.

We pride ourselves on this approach and I have previously mentioned some examples. But a recent situation was more than just responding to a customer’s request. It was proactive consulting - providing consulting before it is asked for, and then not even charging for it. A new concept. Let me explain. Better yet, let me just refer you to Gary Sherman’s recent blog post, Hiding Empty Queues in Dovetail Agent, that will give you the details.

Thanks Gary, for looking for ways to make our customers’ lives easier, even when they haven’t asked for it.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

Is SaaS for Everyone?

slynn — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:27:00 GMT

I had previously written about The Risks Associated with SaaS. Now more on this subject from Michael Maoz, an analyst with Gartner. In his blog post, SaaS is Hype to Most of the World, Dear Western Cloud Watcher, Maoz writes about his conversations with business executives outside the Western world. These business executives asked some really tough questions about the benefits of SaaS and the TCO.

“There were intense questions about the true total cost of ownership for complex installations. Simple/static activities like most of the activities of sales personnel, or survey tools, or HR applications were understood as candidates for SaaS. But what about core functionality in banking or insurance? What about large scale, mission-critical, highly integrated / interconnected call centers? What is the true TCO? What about where there is a need for business process?”

He goes on to say, that these business executives see the beneficiary of SaaS to be the software vendors themselves. They question the true 5 year costs to companies of SaaS.

Seems there are still quite a few people out there who aren’t ready to jump on the SaaS band-wagon, and for good reasons.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

So How Good is the Commitment of our Customer Support Personnel?

slynn — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:00:00 GMT

I love talking about Dovetail’s Customer Support. I know it comes off sounding self serving, but if your customer support personnel were as dedicated to the customers as ours are, you would brag about them also. And since I always say “Actions Speak Louder Than Words”, let me use another recent example to demonstrate the level of commitment of Dovetail’s customer service. A couple of weeks ago, one of our customer support personnel (he prefers that I not name him) was at the hospital as his wife was in labor and about to deliver their new son. It happened to be 6 am in the morning and his cell phone rang. It was one of our customers so our support person excused himself from his wife (a brave soul at this moment), and left the room to talk to the customer. The customer had a critical support issue. Our support person took down all the relevant information from the customer and immediately called another support personnel to handle the issue.

The story had a great conclusion as our support person’s wife delivered a healthy baby boy and our customer’s support issue was quickly solved.

How’s that for dedication?

Until Next Time,

Stephen

Jeremy Miller's latest article in MSDN Magazine

slynn — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:25:00 GMT

Jeremy Miller, Dovetail Software's chief software architect, is a regular author for MSDN magazine. In this month's magazine, Jeremy writes about Patterns in Practice. Take a read and let us know your thoughts on Jeremy’s article. Thanks Jeremy for taking your time to contribute to the technical community.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

The Risks Associated with SaaS

slynn — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:28:00 GMT

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 give many companies pause – What happens if your SaaS provider goes out of business?

There is always some risk associated with going with a small company, whether it is SaaS or on-premise, but at least with an on-premise solution, a company isn’t put into a short-term bind if their solution provider goes out of business. But in these tough economic times, that is a real risk with SaaS providers. Just ask customers of either Entellium or LucidEra. Both customer bases were put into the precarious position of quickly finding new solutions and figuring out how to get their critical data, which they don’t own or have access to, under their control. Furthermore, these solutions are generally mission-critical to an organization’s operation; so if a company loses access to these critical systems for even a couple of hours, their operation is compromised. And you don’t get to do this on your own timeframe. We all know how IT projects are done on IT’s timeline, and often they take a lot of planning.

So, a word of advice. Do your homework and make sure you consider both the pros and cons in choosing your solution provider.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

Customer Survey – Don’t Ask Unless You Really Want to Know

slynn — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:46:00 GMT

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 down. I never heard from anyone.

If constructed well, a customer survey can be very valuable to an establishment, especially one that prides themselves on their top quality service like the Ritz-Carlton. They especially need to know when their customers have had a problem so they can rectify the problem to maintain their top-notch rating. So now I am wondering if they even bother to tabulate the survey and read the comments that their guests took the time to complete. Furthermore, they left a bad taste in my mouth. We had a fabulous time and I easily would have forgotten about the one problem we had, but now the bad taste will linger much longer because of the lack of follow-thru, and I will question in my mind whether the Ritz-Carlton truly cares about their guests, or is it just an act.

So remember, customer service doesn’t end when the customer leaves. Don’t bother with customer surveys if you don’t want to hear what your customers have to say, or if you don’t have the desire or resources to follow through.

Until Next Time,

Stephen

Jeremy Miller Travels the World to Speak at Norwegian Developers Conference 2009

slynn — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:33:00 GMT

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 to others. Enjoy the beautiful country.

Until Next Time,

Stephen