Earlier this month, I joined Perceptyx as Chief Customer Officer, and in a way I am going back to my roots. I spent the early part of my career as one of the first chief customer officers in B2B HR technology, building the customer success and post-sale functions that many companies now take for granted. I later stepped away to run my own employee experience consulting firm, where Perceptyx was a partner and I worked alongside CEO Ross Wainwright and his team. When the chance came to return to an operating role here, I took it.
I wasn't looking. I had built a strong consulting business I cared about, and for most companies I would not have considered a return to a full-time operating role. Three things changed my mind: the people, the pace, and the opportunity. I have trusted Ross for more than a decade, and the team here has the talent to execute on a real plan rather than a pitch. Perceptyx also ships new capability faster than any organization I have worked with, and that pace is what keeps a company ahead in a market that resets every few months. Most of all, I believe AI-driven employee experience is about to change how organizations run, and Perceptyx is built to lead it.
I have lived through two technology shifts that forced nearly every business to reinvent how it operated. The first was the arrival of what was then called the “world wide web,” which rewrote how businesses reached people. The second was the move to software as a service (SaaS), which altered how businesses bought and ran their tools. AI is the third. It changes how work gets done and how decisions get made, and the companies that build for it now will set the terms for everyone else.
What is different this time is that AI does some of the heavy lifting on its own. For years, connecting data across departments and getting teams aligned took deliberate effort and rarely held. AI handles much of that orchestration behind the scenes, so the cross-functional visibility companies have wanted for twenty years is finally within reach.
When I started, an annual engagement survey meant a hundred questions and a six-month wait for results. By the time the report landed, the people who raised the concerns had often already left, and any action came too late to matter. The first real breakthrough was bringing data together across silos once SaaS became the norm. Companies that did this well could finally see what was happening across the whole organization instead of one function at a time. Real-time dashboards came next and replaced the long wait with feedback leaders could act on the following day.
Connecting qualitative and quantitative data to the business goals leaders care about most, however, remained difficult — and it still trips up most companies. That is the gap Perceptyx has been purpose built to close.
Twenty years of employee listening data is our foundation. It lets our proprietary AI find patterns and trends that a single survey cycle would never reveal. On top of that data sits conversational AI, agentic AI, behavioral nudges through Activate, and capability building through Develop, our learning solution. Perceptyx was also first to bring crowdsourcing and action planning down to the individual employee. For most of my career, employees had things done to them. They gave input, they received thanks for their participation, and then the change happened without them. Now an employee can help shape the change their own feedback points to, at every level of the organization.
This ties feedback to outcomes leaders measure. We can see, for example, that when employees report they do not have the tools and resources to do their jobs well, safety incidents tend to rise soon after. That pattern holds in settings like mining and airlines, where a safety event carries real human and financial cost. The same approach links employee voice to patient satisfaction in healthcare and to store performance during slower retail periods. These are the stories worth telling, because they show what this important work is for.
Buyers face more budget scrutiny than they used to, and they evaluate vendors through a sharper lens. Meeting a checklist and being pleasant to work with is table stakes now. Buyers also ask where a company is taking its product, because what they buy today will look dated within a year if the roadmap is weak. Our answer is a single story that runs from listening to capability building to action across the organization.
Personalization is part of why that story is so compelling. The old model was a blunt instrument: if manager effectiveness scored low, every manager got the same training, whether they needed it or not. Perceptyx now tailors development to the individual, drawn from their own data, which respects people's time and produces better results.
My organization is responsible for customer value from day one onward. We make sure each customer is being measured against the business goals they bought us to solve, that they keep adapting as those goals shift, and that the partnership grows with them through adoption, renewal, and expansion.
The thread running through all of it is proof. We show customers the link between using our products and the business results they are after, and we keep the right executive sponsors and decision makers engaged so the partnership stays strong. The demonstration of ongoing value is job number one.
The energy at Perceptyx is off the charts. People here are rowing in the same direction and supporting each other, and the “one team, one dream” culture I had heard about turns out to be real. The infrastructure already in place is strong.
I also see an opportunity. After a long stretch of fast growth, there is value in stepping back to ask why we do something a certain way and whether a better way exists. I came here to roll up my sleeves and work with the team, and I will keep asking for input so we make the best calls for our people and our customers.
Over the next several months, I want to help Perceptyx continue owning the category for AI applied to HR transformation and people activation. We have the data, the products, and the team to do it, and the pace of our innovation should keep us ahead while others work to catch up. My colleague Ross Wainwright has written about how AI and behavioral science turn employee experience into measurable business outcomes, and that is the work I am here to carry forward with our customers.
Mary Poppen is Chief Customer Officer at Perceptyx. Trained as an industrial and organizational psychologist, she has spent more than two decades helping organizations transform through the intersection of people, process, and technology, and was one of the first chief customer officers in B2B HR technology.
If you want to see how continuous listening, action, and development come together in one people activation system, read our look at the era of autonomous employee experience, or schedule a meeting with our team.