Are Technology Advancements Hurting Your Contact Center? Empirix and Dr. Jon Anton Provide Answer in Joint Webcast.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 26, 2004

Free Event Scheduled for Mar. 31, 2004 at 2pm Eastern

Empirix, the leading provider of integrated test and monitoring solutions for Web, voice and network applications, will host a free Webcast on Mar. 31, 2004 featuring Dr. Jon Anton, director of benchmark research at Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality and a well-known expert on contact center excellence. Titled, "Are Technology Advancements Hurting Your Contact Center?" the session will explore the impact of technology changes on service quality and agent productivity in medium and large contact centers.

A frequent industry speaker and author of many books and articles on contact center quality, Dr. Jon has been working directly in this area for 10+ years. During this Webcast, which is designed for contact center managers and senior-level telecom and IT professionals, he will provide insight into strategies to ensure that new technologies do not disrupt contact center operations, and do deliver promised benefits.

With the largest and fastest-growing portion of 2004 IT budgets focused on outward-facing applications that improve customer and supplier interaction(1), contact center managers are facing unprecedented technology changes, including:

-- Voice over IP (VoIP) and VXML applications and networks;

-- Speech recognition and CTI applications; and

-- Multi-channel CRM systems.

"Technology should be a facilitator, not an impediment, to great customer service and happier, more productive agents," said Dr. Jon, also the founder of BenchmarkPortal, which collects and warehouses the Purdue University database of performance data on thousands of customer service contact centers. "Unfortunately, our research has shown that too few companies focus on managing the performance of their contact center applications and infrastructure. This Webcast will raise issues contact center managers and their IT partners need to think about - particularly in light of new technologies such as Voice over IP, which, if not carefully understood and managed, can have a deleterious effect on quality of service."

Joe Alwan, vice president of Enterprise Marketing for Empirix, noted that while agent monitoring is the norm in most contact centers, very few companies test and monitor the caller's experience with the technology in their facilities - even though many callers are initially serviced by touch tone and speech recognition applications. "The caller's first impression is not your agent - it's your automated systems," said Alwan. "There's so much companies can and should be doing to make sure that first impression is a good one."

Empirix specializes in testing and monitoring solutions for Web and voice applications. Its systems are designed to log-on or call into a system just as a customer would and perform real customer transactions, measuring what happens and alerting the appropriate staff if performance strays from the norm. This allows organizations to correct potential problems before they affect customer experience or staff productivity.

Webcast attendees entered into a live drawing for an Apple iPod

The Webcast will be held on Wednesday, Mar. 31, 2004 at 2pm Eastern. To register, visit http://www.empirix.com/benchmarkevent. Registered attendees will be entered into a live drawing for an Apple iPod. For questions or more information, call 866-228-3781 or email [e-mail].

About Empirix

Empirix is the leading source for test and monitoring solutions that measure, manage, and enhance the performance of Web and voice applications, contact centers and communications networks. Empirix delivers powerful and innovative products and services that improve end-users' Quality of Experience (QoE) while reducing development costs and improving time to market. Empirix currently delivers products, services and support to more than 3,400 customers worldwide, including Global 2000 enterprises, network equipment manufacturers and service providers. Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Empirix has offices throughout the United States, and in Europe and Asia. For more information, visit Empirix on the Web at www.empirix.com.

(1) "Edge of the Enterprise Survey," Yankee Group, M. Dominy, Feb. 2004