AnswerSoft announces Concerto; first to combine call center automation with power of Web.

PLANO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 3, 1997--AnswerSoft Inc., a global provider of call center software automation solutions Monday announced Concerto, its newest product family that enables the convergence of inbound/outbound call processing, enterprise applications, enterprise databases and the Internet/intranet.

Concerto is the first automation software that allows call centers to rapidly design and deploy unique methods for providing personalized, one-to-one service across all modes of customer contact. The Concerto product family resides on a high speed software automation engine developed by AnswerSoft, capable of handling thousands of simultaneous data and voice transactions per minute. New applications within the Concerto suite include: Silhouette, which allows agents to service customer inquiries through the Internet; Sixth Sense NC, which allows use of a Web browser or "thin client" to access enterprise applications and databases for agent/workflow automation; and Shadow for customer transaction tracking.

"Call centers are becoming mission critical to every aspect and phase of a corporation's relationship with its customers, becoming the primary -- or even sole -- point of direct customer contact and competitive differentiation," said Jeanne Bayless, AnswerSoft's CEO and president. "Concerto represents a new class of automation applications, that enable call centers to offer unique services for improved customer relationships, resulting in higher customer retention and enhanced profitability per customer."

Each product within Concerto specializes in integrating and managing a discrete point of automation within the call center such as agent actions, inbound/outbound customer routing, and/or customer Internet inquiries. Providing a software platform in which all customer interactions, enterprise data and applications converge, Concerto enables call center agents to obtain a single comprehensive view of a customer in real time, based on customer-specific information residing anywhere and everywhere across the enterprise including current Web site activity. In addition, customers have a single, consistent and unified view of the enterprise, no matter where or when a contact occurs.

"The potential for using the Internet to complete business transactions is enormous but has not been fully exploited because it remains a static, one-way communications vehicle particularly in high volume transaction environments," said Tom Hite, AnswerSoft's vice president, research and development. "Concerto offers call centers a significant breakthrough by simultaneously integrating and synchronizing data and voice. This provides a dynamic communication methodology that customizes and personalizes every customer interaction while capturing, tracking and delivering all pertinent customer information residing throughout the enterprise, to the agent's desktop. This optimizes the company's Web site and ensures end-to-end management of the customer relationship regardless of the point or method of contact."

Core Products

The Concerto family is a suite of integrated software products that can be implemented together as a unit or as standalone applications. Each application provides a standard graphical user interface for defining events. Events trigger call center-specific scripts to automate and improve particular functions needed for call center agents to deliver efficient, high quality customer service. The new Concerto applications include:

Silhouette -- enables a call center to service customer inquiries through a company's Web server by matching customers with "best information" and presenting it at the company's Web site. Using customer-specific data, Silhouette intelligently determines the most suitable service pages. Silhouette is able to dynamically create customized Web pages for personalized chats based on data that is gathered from customer input using a new technique developed by AnswerSoft (dynamic page determination, dynamic content generation and page filtering). Silhouette can also dynamically provide service routing to peer Web services and to network computers.

Sixth Sense NC -- extends the functionality of Answersoft's flagship product, Sixth Sense, to the Internet and corporate intranets. Like Sixth Sense, Sixth Sense NC automates agent workflows throughout the lifespan of a customer call. Call-events trigger Sixth Sense NC to mine enterprise databases for call-related information, and delivers this information to the agent's desktop. Sixth Sense NC mirrors the functionality of Silhouette, enabling call center agents to use either a Web browser or "thin client" as the front-end to enterprise applications and databases. Sixth Sense NC, however, responds to Web server requests from an agent (rather than a customer) and automates call center business processes by delivering the pages necessary to the agent needed to properly service the caller, simultaneously with the call arriving on the agent's desktop. Additionally, AnswerSoft's intelligent information routing technology can be integrated with Sixth Sense NC to tag a call with the information necessary to route the call to the best available agent for servicing the caller.

Shadow -- Shadow collects and links call and customer-enterprise information enabling call centers to track call statistics linked to individual customers. Shadow assists in the development of customer focused one-to-one marketing programs. Shadow also helps call center managers improve individual staff performance by providing better views of customer service and call center agent performance.

All existing AnswerSoft products -- Sixth Sense, SmartRoute and SoftPhone Agent -- are fully compatible and integrate with Concerto. All existing AnswerSoft customers can immediately expand their call centers or service organizations with these new capabilities.

Concerto's Underlying Technology Architecture

The heart of Concerto is a central automation engine developed by AnswerSoft. The automation engine is capable of handling thousands of simultaneous data and voice transactions per minute. It caches precompiled processes to provide extremely high-speed operation, and can "data mine" or extract needed information from any data source within the enterprise.

The software automation engine integrates with a company's enterprise systems and simultaneously monitors the organization's communications and computer systems. Once an event occurs (such as incoming call or Web inquiry), the automation engine makes decisions based upon user-defined rules as to where the call should be routed, what data should accompany it and how the agent should service the customer. After this data is processed by the automation engine, applications take actions to perform the appropriate tasks such as retrieving data or launching a customer support application.

AnswerSoft's automation engine and applications integrate with a company's enterprise systems through Technology Access Modules (TAMs) provided with Concerto. TAMs play a critical role in the rapid deployment and integration of Concerto into call center environments. TAMs shield the user from the need to understand details of emerging technologies (such as ODBC, HLLAPI, MAPI, or Active X) typically required to achieve integration. TAMs are pre-packaged links to existing data exchange and technology standards, and reside between AnswerSoft applications and an organization's information and telephony systems. TAMs monitor enterprise systems such as PBX, ACDs (automatic call distributors) and Web sites for automation triggering events which in turn associates events with call center automation scripts to invoke business processes.

Concerto with Silhouette, Sixth Sense NC and Shadow is available for immediate purchase. Pricing is based on specific customer configuration and number of agent connections, which varies according to call center sites. Minimum configurations range from $75,000 to $100,000.

AnswerSoft, founded in January 1993, is the single source provider of call center software automation solutions that revolutionize customer relationships, resulting in increased customer retention and equity. AnswerSoft solutions enable informal and formal call centers to rapidly design and deploy unique methods for providing personalized, one-to-one service across all modes of customer contact. AnswerSoft customers include companies such as American Mobile Satellite Corp., Champion International, Celedon Trucking, Compaq Computer Corp., Diversified Investments, First USA, METROCALL, Prime Option, Prudential Insurance, SuperValu and Thomson Electronics.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Concerto, Silhouette, Sixth Sense, Shadow, and SmartRoute are trademarks of Answersoft. All other product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

CONTACT: AnswerSoft Inc.

Lisa Chiranky, 972/612-5114

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Kevin Ota, 805/230-8211

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