Author: Stephen Lynn

President and CEO

About:

Stephen Lynn is the Chief Executive Officer of Dovetail Software. As CEO, he is responsible for formulating the strategic vision, executing the business plan, and building the team for Dovetail Software. Stephen is a successful entrepreneur, with extensive experience running enterprise software companies. Prior to becoming the CEO of Dovetail, Stephen was the President and Chief Operating Officer for bTrade where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations. Under his leadership, bTrade tripled revenue in three years and sold the company to Click Commerce, a public supply-chain company. Prior to bTrade, Stephen was President and CEO of AFX Technology Group International, a wireless telemetry company. He developed the overall company strategic direction and secured their initial key customer before leaving to join bTrade. In the mid to late 90's Stephen was the Chief Operating Officer at IEX, a telecommunications software products company. He led the company's expansion globally, growing the company to over $50 million in revenues and was instrumental in IEX's acquisition by Tekelec, a public telecommunications company, for $163 million. Earlier in his career, Stephen held various senior level positions at Dalfort, Pepsi, A.H. Belo, LTV and American Can. He is also a mentor at STARTech, a Richardson, TX high-tech accelerator that works with startup companies in their early stages to develop their business plans and assist them in securing venture capital funding. Stephen received a MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and also earned a BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania with majors in Finance and Accounting, graduating Magna Cum Laude.

Posts by Stephen Lynn:

Impact of Pricing on the Purchase Decision

October 21, 2010 We here at Dovetail have debated the impact of pricing on the decision making process for years. Recently, due to the current recession, some customers have deferred any decisions awaiting better times. Denis Pombriant addressed the impact of pricing on the purchase decision in a recent blog post titled The Subscription Economy. In it, he suggests that companies whose products aren’t being purchased might not be meeting the biggest feature need of the prospect – payment terms. He goes on to say that during these tough economic times, “finding creative ways to finance a buy may make all the difference.” Budgetary constraints have certainly contributed to the popularity of on-demand pricing models, or pay as you go. But many companies, while looking for ways to reduce their up-front investment, aren’t ready to move their data outside of their four walls.…

Social Media Policies – What’s a Company To Do?

October 20, 2010 By now, we all know that social media usage is exploding, no matter how you measure it. Traffic on social media sites is growing by triple digits and the amount of time people are spending on social media sites has grown by 82% according to Nielsen. For more stats, here's just one site that gives you an idea of the exploding growth. This exploding growth isn’t just happening outside of the workplace. A recent blog post from Forbes cited a new study from Trend Micro that shows a large increase in the usage of social networks while in the office and on the clock. The increased usage of social media in the workplace has put companies in a quandary – many don’t have a social media policy or if they do, they aren’t doing a good job of monitoring compliance.…

Great vs Bad Customer Service, and Technology Could Help

October 13, 2010 I have written a number of times about how good technology doesn’t ensure good customer service. If companies don’t put into place good policies or give their employees the ability to solve customer problems, technology can’t overcome that. Well, it can also be true that technology can “help” ensure good customer service. I say help because it doesn’t guarantee it, it just increases the likelihood of success. I think many of us have had experiences where we are talking to customer service or technical support, and it turns out that the agent doesn’t have all the information he/she needs to assist you. They either have to transfer you to a different department or put you on hold for a long time while they try to track down the information from a different department. I have experienced this not once, but…

We Provide Superior Customer Service! So What, Don’t All Vendors Say That?

August 20, 2010 We are in the process of re-designing our website. One of the great qualities of our company we wanted to highlight in our new website is our commitment to our customers, and how we truly do provide Superior Customer Service. It has been our highest priority since the inception of the company. We understand how the customer service process works and we incorporate this knowledge and experience into our own software, process, and structure when supporting our customers. In a recent independent survey of our customer base, 100% of the respondents described themselves as: Dovetail Software "champions" Likely to recommend us to others Likely to repurchase Very satisfied with the product and the company So we are proud of our Customer Service. But here’s our dilemma. Check out the other software vendors. Probably every one of them says they provide…

Great vs Bad Customer Service, and Technology had Nothing to do with It

August 4, 2010 This past week I experienced both a great customer service experience and a poor customer service experience. As I stopped to think about both of these, something hit me; the experiences had nothing to do with the technology used by either company. We read everywhere about how important Social CRM is going to be to providing good customer service, but in reality, Social CRM will be only as good as the company’s policy with dealing with customers is. Let me elaborate. Two recent blog posts start down the path to making my point, but don’t completely get there. First, in his blog post, Let's Call a Spade a Spade, Esteban Kolsky speaks towards the distinction between Social Media and Social CRM. In his post, he points out that: “Social Media is about tools and tactics, you can never set a…

Why is Dovetail better? Ask our Customers

July 4, 2010 We at Dovetail Software are in business to make money like other CRM vendors, but I think our approach to generating revenue is different than our competitors. Our philosophy is to take care of the customers and their success will ultimately enable us to maximize our revenue over the long haul. To this end we often provide free consulting to our customers or we might blog about customizations or solutions that might benefit our customers. We just completed a customer installation and another example of this was cited by our newest customer. Since we can’t announce this sale yet, I can’t name individuals, but you can still see what makes Dovetail different. The customer was talking to our installer at their site and said to him: “I can look at your blogging and tell you value your customers and customer…

Ever Wonder What Happens to Your Customer Surveys

June 23, 2010 I don’t know about you, but I would prefer a provider not pretend they care about what you have to say as opposed to claiming they care, and then don’t follow thru. We are conditioned to providers not doing anything after the purchase such that we don’t give it much thought when they don’t. More often than not, I don’t respond to providers’ requests for a survey response, but sometimes, because they have a great way of asking for it, or something really good or bad happened, I do respond. So now the provider has raised the bar, especially when they ask, “Can somebody follow-up with you if they have additional questions?” or “Would you like someone to follow-up with you?” And people remember ….I remember that I had an issue at the Ritz-Carlton, they provided a follow-up survey, I…

Happy Father’s Day to Me

June 21, 2010 You know you are going to have a great day when you combine a day of being waited on along with great customer service. I woke up today to some Father’s Day cards, some presents, and a menu to order from IHOP. When my wife ordered breakfast, she reminded the person on the phone to put the strawberry topping on the French Toast. When the person on the phone asked her to explain, she told the person that last time we got this item, they didn’t put the strawberries on top. When he heard that the previous order wasn’t right, he said, “no problem, they should have gotten it right last time, and this order was on them.” He had no idea whether this actually happened, we didn’t ask for anything, yet this was the way he handled it. Great…

What Does it Take to Provide Superior Customer Service

September 30, 2009 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…

Value of Software Maintenance and Support

August 27, 2009 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…

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