Sage Creates and Maintains Extraordinary Customer Experience Using Net Promoter Concept

RICHMOND, BC--(Marketwire - February 9, 2009) - When the employees at Sage North America's Richmond campus talk about the most important agents for driving business improvement, the customer is at the top of the agenda, according to Laurie Schultz, general manager and senior vice president, Sage Accpac and Simply Accounting by Sage. With more than 5.8 million Sage customers worldwide, the focus on customer engagement is making an impact.

"We are committed to creating an extraordinary experience for our customers, and that means working to ensure that every one of our customer interactions go beyond their expectations to meet their needs," said Schultz. "We've made some great strides improving processes, but we can never become complacent with well enough."

This unrelenting focus on the customer has landed Schultz as a featured contributor in the newly released book "Answering the Ultimate Question: How Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business" by Richard Owen and Laura L. Brooks, PhD. In the book, Schultz explains how Sage is applying the Net Promoter concept to create extraordinary experiences for its small- and medium-sized business customers.

"My experiences with Sage have been very positive. They are responsive to my needs, and I feel like they care about the success of my business," said Malcolm Gray, president, Sycorp Environmental Inc. and Simply Accounting by Sage customer.

Schultz details in the book the steps she and the company have taken to create a strong Net Promoter culture within Sage, which is a process that involves education, volunteers and empowering employees to want to provide the best service possible.

Simply Accounting has consistently scored a high NPS among accounting software packages in its market. Developed in the Sage global research and development centre in Richmond, BC, Simply Accounting is the perennial favorite of Canadian small businesses. The #1 accounting software program for more than 25 years in Canada, Simply Accounting by Sage has received several honors, including prestigious industry awards from Contact Center World.

The Net Promoter customer loyalty concept was introduced in 1999, and it has quickly become a highly recognised program for improving customer relations. Net Promoter utilizes a scoring process to determine which customers would highly recommend a product. A percentage is then computed based upon the scores achieved, to determine the final Net Promoter Score (NPS).

About Sage North America

Sage North America is part of The Sage Group plc, a leading global supplier of business management software and services. At Sage, we live and breathe business every day. We are passionate about helping our customers achieve their ambitions. Our range of business software and services is continually evolving as we innovate to answer our customers' needs. Our solutions support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of the construction, distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries. Sage North America employs approximately 4,800 people and supports nearly 2.9 million small and medium-size business customers. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989, employs more than 14,500 people and supports more than 5.8 million customers worldwide. For more information, please visit the web site at www.sagenorthamerica.com or call 866-308-2378.

© 2009 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, Sage Software, 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.

Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld.

Contact Information: Contacts: Marchell Gillis 770-724-4256 marchell.Gillis@sage.com Mark Priscaro 925-931-7048 mark.priscaro@sage.com