Sage Wins 2013 CX Innovation Award From the Customer Experience Professionals Association

IRVINE, CA--(Marketwired - May 20, 2013) - Sage North America today announced it was one of two winners of a 2013 CX Innovation Award from the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), a global nonprofit organization focused on guiding and enhancing the growing field of customer experience management. The CX Innovation Awards recognize new practices that improve customer experience, result in strong business impact and advance the field of customer experience for other organizations.

Sage, a global developer of business management software and services for small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, entered its Sage Advisor Messenger technology for this year's CX Innovation Awards competition. Sage Advisor was created to address three main customer experience challenges: 1) helping new software users get started, 2) helping existing software users work more productively, and 3) making it easier for software users to solve problems.

"While all companies have materials for addressing these common issues, the challenge is that this generally available information isn't targeted or timely," said Brad Smith, executive vice president, customer experience, for Sage. "We wanted to provide only relevant advice to each customer, at the time they needed the information, in as brief and unobtrusive a way as possible."

With Sage Advisor Messenger, users receive messages while using certain Sage products, based specifically on what they are doing and rules sent out from Sage. The patent pending rules engine allows Sage to push out rules and messages outside of a release (that is, the user doesn't need to install anything), so if a customer support representative sees a trending issue for certain how-to or troubleshooting calls, Sage can send out a message to customers through the software to proactively address those calls.

"We're delivering a highly personalized and timely customer experience with a very high volume of customers," said Smith. "We believe this does more than deliver great applications; it increases the value of an ongoing relationship with Sage and helps us deliver advice to customers just before or even at the moment they realize they need it. Personalized customer experiences don't have to only come from phone-based support."

Earlier this week, award winners Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Sage, along with three finalists -- Autodesk, Barclaycard US and OKC Thunder -- were recognized at the second annual CX Innovation Awards Luncheon in the historic Crown Ballroom at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, the site of the 2013 CXPA Members Insight Exchange.

An international nonprofit organization, the CXPA was created to guide and enhance the growing professional field of customer experience management. The CX Innovation Awards recognize new practices that improve customer experience, result in strong business impact and advance the field of customer experience for other organizations.

About The Sage Group plc
Sage Group plc is a leading global provider of business management software to small and medium sized companies, creating greater freedom for them to succeed. Sage understands how and why each business is unique. We provide products and services that suit varying needs, are a pleasure to use and are secure and efficient. Formed in 1981, Sage was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and entered the FTSE 100 in 1999. Sage has over 6 million customers and more than 13,380 employees in 24 countries covering the UK & Ireland, mainland Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, Asia and Brazil. For further information please visit www.sage.com

For more information about Sage in North America, please visit the company website at NA.Sage.com. Follow Sage North America on Facebook, Facebook.com/SageNorthAmerica, and Twitter, Twitter.com/SageNAmerica.

©2013 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc. or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.