Abbyy names Paula Sanders Chief Customer Experience Officer

ABBYY has appointed Paula Sanders as Chief Customer Experience Officer, bringing several customer-facing teams under one leader.

Sanders will head a newly unified customer experience organisation spanning Customer Excellence, Pre-Sales, Technical Success and Professional Services. The move is intended to give customers a single point of accountability across their relationship with ABBYY.

The appointment formalises a broader organisational change at the document AI software provider. By combining teams that have often worked at different stages of the customer relationship, ABBYY aims to reduce handoffs between sales, implementation and ongoing support.

Sanders has spent 14 years at ABBYY in a series of customer-facing roles. She joined in 2011 as Professional Services Lead Consultant, later took on responsibility for global sales engineering, and most recently oversaw the company's broader pre- and post-sales and Professional Services operations.

That internal career path gives her oversight of much of the customer journey, from initial technical discussions through deployment and longer-term use. Before joining ABBYY, she spent more than 20 years in senior roles across document imaging, data capture and enterprise content management.

Customer structure

The new role reflects a broader effort by software companies to tighten coordination between commercial, technical and service functions as customers demand clearer ownership after a sale. At ABBYY, Sanders will work directly with team leaders as the new structure is implemented.

Ulf Persson, Chief Executive Officer of ABBYY, said the company was building on Sanders' existing relationships with customers and internal teams.

"Our customers have come to trust and rely on Paula's teams at every stage of their ABBYY journey," said Ulf Persson, Chief Executive Officer of ABBYY. "She brings a deep understanding of the customer lifecycle, strong relationships across the business, and the leadership capability to make this work. As we continue to innovate and create new solutions that accelerate and improve how organizations use their documents for enterprise intelligence, Paula and her organization will ensure our customers are always positioned to realize the full benefit."

ABBYY sells software focused on intelligent document processing and document AI, an area where companies are seeking to automate the extraction and use of information from business documents. More than 10,000 enterprises use its products, according to the company, including many Fortune 500 businesses. ABBYY is based in Austin, Texas, and has offices in 13 countries.

Industry backdrop

The leadership change comes as software vendors face pressure to show customers measurable returns from AI-related investments. For suppliers in document processing, that often means linking product sales more closely with implementation, technical support and ongoing advisory services.

ABBYY also pointed to recent external recognition in the intelligent document processing market, saying Gartner had named it a Leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Document Processing. The company linked that position to both its document AI products and its customer service operations.

Sanders said her focus would be on ensuring customers see value from the start of the relationship and as their use of the software expands.

"My goal is to ensure that every customer experiences the full power of ABBYY AI from day one, and that we give them the partnership, consistency, and confidence to achieve maximum value from their investment," said Paula Sanders, Chief Customer Experience Officer of ABBYY. "I plan to empower ABBYY's broader ambition to build a customer success model that scales with your business, so customers who trust ABBYY to transform how they work will experience greater results than they ever thought possible."