Quick 6 With Doug Meyer, Sage Software

In this feature on the Customer Experience Matters blog, we ask 6 questions of different customer experience leaders.

• Name: Doug Meyer
• Title: Chief Customer Officer
• Company: Sage North America
• Length of time on the job: 18 months
• Previous position: President, Industry Solutions Division

1) What do you most like about your role?

The best thing about my job is being able to point to the substantial, positive impact we’re having on both our company culture and the customer experience we provide. These results have been possible because of the strong leadership support I receive; Sage’s brand promise of an extraordinary customer experience; and our company’s culture, which has been built on a foundation of providing excellent customer support and service.

2) What are you most proud of accomplishing?

After just over a year, customer experience is top of mind for our leadership and with virtually all of our 4,000 employees. It is moving from “something to do” to “who we are”. Significantly, all 4,000 employees (in groups of 15) have participated in 2.5 hour workshops over the past year. Led by Sage executives, the workshops went a long way in helping us to develop a common understanding of what we are trying to achieve with our customer experience efforts.

3) What has been the most surprising challenge?

Sage North America consists of 24 acquisitions over the past 12 years. This has resulted in a lot of our early work being “foundational” – moving toward common processes, policies and systems. This has been important, but time consuming work.

4) How would you describe where your company is on its customer experience journey?

We’re still in the early stages – lots of foundational work continuing, but we are turning the corner to focus on competitive differentiation via customer experience in our product and service offerings.

5) What initiatives are you currently most excited about?

We have some really exciting initiatives involving our product and support offers that are designed to truly help our customers get a better return on their investment with Sage. As well, we’ve closely linked our customer experience efforts with our business performance via key metrics and drivers. These links result in even more focus on our customer experience strategy and execution.

Extra credit question: What would people be surprised to find out about you?

They’d probably be surprised that I was a top distance runner in high school. Also, I’m an engineer by education.