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:

It’s About Making the Customer Successful

August 12, 2009 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,…

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

August 3, 2009 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…

Jeremy Miller’s latest article in MSDN Magazine

July 31, 2009 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

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

June 18, 2009 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…

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

June 15, 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 to others. Enjoy the beautiful country. Until Next Time, Stephen

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…

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