The creation of the ACT! Online Community has allowed Sage to listen to the needs of its small and mid-size business customers and better serve them, so that they in turn can better serve their customers.

The ACT! Online Community, with over 6.2 million page views and more than 90,000 forum logins in the seven months since its inception, has not only helped achieve our goal to better connect with, listen to, and respond to our customers; in many instances inspired by community member comments, we have literally changed the way we offer our product to customers and how we provide them technical support.

We have also seen a significant decrease in negative online reviews as ACT! users continue to embrace the online community, using it to give feedback that Sage actively utilizes to build a better product. In fact, the release of our newest ACT! 2009 (11.0) product was aided by the participation of ACT! users within the community. We conducted a beta customer participation program, in which ACT! users tested the product and Sage developers used feedback to make immediate enhancements to the product build, often in less than 48 hours. As a result, the August release of ACT! 2009 focused on the productivity feature improvements our customers most desired.

Additionally, from a Sage business perspective, the community has helped ACT! achieve a 15 point increase in its net promoter score as measured by Satmetrix. This improvement is extraordinary, as each 5 point increase can result in a positive business increase of 25-95% according to Satmetrix.