Not long after breaking every software-industry growth record, Siebel Systems (now part of Oracle) saw its satisfaction ratings begin to drop. An adopter of customer experience management, the company had gathered data revealing that customers found a large disparity between actual and expected costs of ownership of Siebel 6, a sales-force automation tool based on a client-server architecture. The proposed solution, a shift to a Web-based architecture in Siebel 7, would require forgoing the development of other major features—and the revenues they generated—for two years. Yet Siebel’s leadership went ahead with the shift anyway. Satisfaction levels soon returned to their formerly lofty levels, and employees took heart as management placed experience ahead of revenues.