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:

Swim Naked or Provide Good Customer Service in Bad Times

May 2, 2008 While the U.S. suffers through declining home prices and rising unemployment, the Nero's of economics are tuning up their fiddles while trying to determine if we're technically in a recession. Forbes reported this week that,"Regardless of the GDP numbers, data show unambiguous signs of a struggling economy. For homeowners watching prices drop, for the newly unemployed or for businesses with low corporate profits, the current debate over whether the economy is in recession is largely meaningless. What these people want to know is simple: When will it end?"Consumers, apparently worried about rising food and oil prices, are losing hope, canceling vacations and being more careful with their money, as seen in Consumer Confidence Index's drop for the fourth straight month in a row. "Economists closely watch sentiment readings since consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation's economic…

Customer Service – The Right Way and the Wrong Way

April 16, 2008 Being in the business of selling CRM software utilized by customer service and support organizations, I am constantly observing the way companies support their customers. Let’s look at two companies in action. I stay in a particular hotel frequently and know many of the staff. As I walked into the lobby last week, I noticed a car with a flat tire parked in one of the handicapped parking spaces. An elderly couple was standing outside their car chatting with the front desk manager while the maintenance man from the hotel was changing the flat tire for this couple. This isn’t a 4 star hotel where you might assume this service would be provided; yet, this was a hotel going out of their way to provide superior customer service. Contrast this with a large unnamed bank I do business with who…

Take Care of Your Customers

March 27, 2008 We had a recent incident that I think speaks towards Dovetail’s approach to providing superior customer service. One of our newer customers was doing some custom development work utilizing our Dovetail CRM product and they ran into a situation where they were stuck. So they contacted their sales person via an email and inquired about whether they could purchase consulting services to help them complete their customizations. The typical salesperson approach, and a company only worried about the almighty dollar, would have immediately taken the order and booked the revenue. Not Dovetail. The salesperson called the customer and asked some questions. Once he understood the customer’s need, he recalled another customer faced a similar situation which Gary Sherman had solved. He also remembered that Gary had written a blog post highlighting that customer’s need and his solution. So the salesperson…

Single Vendor or “Best of Breed”

March 26, 2008 I have talked to a number of companies who have been analyzing their current enterprise software systems structure. Their struggle - Utilize a single vendor to provide all of the enterprise’s needs or choose a "best of breed" approach. Complicating this analysis is that there is a further debate between using a single CRM vendor for all of a company's CRM needs vs utilizing a “best of breed” approach to the various CRM requirements. I might add, this isn't a new debate; it is one that goes back probably a decade or more. I have found the proponents pretty well split down the middle although there have been shifts in momentum tilting more towards one approach vs the other. Early on, many companies jumped on the bandwagon focused on one vendor utilizing one central system. While this concept is great in…

Dovetail Providing Clarify Help – Is it a Risk?

February 14, 2008 I wish I could take credit for all the ideas I communicate, but I can’t, and I have our customers to thank for many of the good ideas we get. We’re lucky that our customers take such an interest in helping us. On a recent trip, I visited a prospect in the morning and we were discussing the possibility of Dovetail taking over their Amdocs support. The senior executive was concerned about the “what if?”. Specifically, “While we may save money from moving our support to Dovetail, what if we have a “real” problem. You don’t have the Amdocs source code, so what if you can’t solve the problem. We won’t be able to go back to Amdocs.” We talked about his concern, and I tried to put his mind at ease, speaking towards our ability to find a workaround…

Practice What You Preach

February 11, 2008 Just image, a company whose business is developing CRM software for Customer Service & Support who doesn’t provide great support themselves. What a contradiction! Lucky for Dovetail and its customers, this situation doesn’t exist. Utilizing my favorite motto, “Actions Speak Louder than Words”, let me cite a recent example that demonstrates Dovetail’s commitment to world-class customer service. A customer opened a support case. We quickly solved the customer’s problem and closed the case. Later that day, the person who handled the support case was on a conference call with the customer on a non-support issue. The customer had to pause to tell a story about what had happened earlier in the day. He said, “I was very impressed when I opened a support issue, and had a response back from Dovetail just 3 minutes later. It was such a fast…

True Customer Partnership – Making a Difference

December 18, 2007 How often have you as a customer heard from your vendor that they want to be more than just your vendor? “We aren’t looking for the quick sale. We want to be your long-term partner”. Sound familiar?We at Dovetail also make that claim, but one big difference is that we back up the words with our actions. As I have said before in my blog, Actions Speak Louder than Words. So, let me tell you about a recent example. I just visited one of our key customers (I haven’t asked their permission so I won’t use their name.). Over a two day period, I met with senior management, both within IT and within the business unit, as well as the key people responsible for the Dovetail environment. I was finishing up with one of the meetings with a senior executive…

Dovetail Bolt for the Holidays

December 14, 2007 We at Dovetail Software have been faithful providers to the Clarify community for over 10 years. It is a unique position as we are a successful software company in our own rights, but we also feel an allegiance to the Clarify community. We compete for the Clarify business, but we also provide to those people who are responsible for supporting their Clarify environment on a daily basis. With that in mind, Dovetail’s gift to the Clarify community for the holidays is our Dovetail BOLT product (Data Sheet). This is a powerful tool that gives the Clarify users real-time access to their Clarify data from a set of easy-to-use web pages. All you need to do is join our forum (Click to Join) and we will email you BOLT for free. A double bonus, a powerful development tool and a forum that…

Assistance for Dovetail and Clarify Users

September 5, 2007 As I said in one of my previous blog posts, we are often accused of providing free consulting as part of our normal customer service and support (a great problem for our customers). This occurs when our customers call us with a question, through suggestions provided via our Company blog, and even through CRM forums such as the ITtoolbox Clarify User Group . And for those of you who follow me , you know that I believe that Actions Speak Louder than Words, so let me utilize two recent examples from Gary Sherman to validate my claim. The first occurred when Gary was thinking about a customer’s question regarding their desire to monitor SLAs. There was an easy way out, but that isn’t the way Gary, or our other Dovetail employees work. Our goal is to find the best…

Actions Speak Louder than Words – Customer Service

September 1, 2007 I am accused of having many mottos I live by. Sometimes, I think both my family and my employees are tired of hearing me quote these. One of my favorites is “Actions Speak Louder than Words”. Let’s relate this motto to a critical area, Customer Service. Most companies will tell you how important customer service is to them, and keeping their customers happy is paramount to them. However, often when you investigate further, you find that while they say this, their actions don’t follow their words. We at Dovetail also say that customer service is critical to our company. However, we make sure that our actions follow our words. Let me tell you about a recent example. We recently secured a new Clarify Help Desk Support customer, a State University. I won’t name them since I haven’t asked their permission,…

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