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:

Dovetail Software Expands Customer Support Services

February 18, 2009 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 customers to contact Dovetail for support via whatever means is most convenient for our customer, but the company wants to make sure if there are any questions, our customers have a person to turn to. Second, as part of our annual support, Dovetail will provide a three day…

Maybe Amdocs Should Call Dovetail for Clarify Support

February 16, 2009 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 see the full exchange , but as you can see below, Jorge got the answer he was looking for: Reply from jcruz1965 on 2/16/2009 10:32 AM “Hi Gary,I was able to squeeze on some time on Friday and implement your fix in our development system. Worked flawlessly. I now…

Dovetail Rescues Another Amdocs Customer

February 11, 2009 How often do you hear how important customer support is to a company? Furthermore, how often do you also hear that “We provide world class support”? Phrases used often by companies. We at Dovetail also believe we provide “world class support”, but we also believe that Actions Speak Louder than Words. Therefore, I always like examples where we can back-up this claim with Actions; even better when this support is provided to an Amdocs customer who can’t get satisfaction from Amdocs, but we at Dovetail are able to help. This week at ITToolbox, an Amdocs customer posed a question about Auto Closing a Part Request. At one point through the forum exchange, the questioner goes on to say, “When i posed the question to Amdocs i got that it was too complicated to do this.” How’s that for…

Customer Service – Poor Execution or Customer’s Preference

October 15, 2008 There is an ongoing debate within the Support & Service industry as to why more CS&S issues aren't handled by means other than live agents. There are those who say that vendors haven't created the right solutions for customers to implement. There are others who claim that customers like to talk to live people, not machines. When I say machines, I am also including people utilizing technology, including self service, live chat, and emails, to name a few. Basically, anything but a live person. If you take the first position, you would believe there are opportunities for companies who solve the technology problem and provide better self service solutions. On the other hand, if you believe that people like to talk to humans, then the task ahead is to give the agents all the tools possible to improve the customer…

What do Dovetail Software Customers Think of Our Customer Service?

October 2, 2008 Scott Hornstein, co-author of the book Opt-In Marketing, recently penned A Novel Concept: What Do Customers Think of Customer Service? for Sales and Marketing Management and his column does indeed raise a somewhat novel concept. That is, he conducted a Q&A with the most important people in business, the customers to find out what they really think.Writes Mr. Hornstein, "We discuss CRM and customer service issues from a lofty position. We speak of strategies and processes and successes—the articles and case histories I find are largely congratulatory."What I don't find are articles and case studies reflecting what customers think. Are they equally as delighted? To find out, I thought I'd ask some customers how they feel about some of the basic issues." Among his survey respondents, Mr Hornstein finds the "report card is bad."As longtime proponents of customer service and…

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…

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