Aspect Communications Powers CRM Practices of More Than 150 Companies in Australia and New Zealand.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SYDNEY, Australia & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 19, 2000

Aspect Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:ASPT), the leading provider of customer relationship portals, today announced that Aspect's award-winning technology is powering the customer relationship management (CRM) practices of more than 150 companies in Australia and New Zealand.

Fortune 500 companies across all industry segments, such as hospitality, banking, energy and communications, are using Aspect products as the foundation for their eBusiness initiatives. Aspect customers include AXA Australia, American Express, Amway, Avis, Bank of Montreal, Bank United, BankWest, Carlton and United Breweries, Cellular One, Microsoft, Western Power and Vodafone.

According to Peter McNamee, Aspect's managing director for Australasia, companies need to focus on customer service and retention in today's competitive environment and integrate their current customer service systems accordingly. "Integrating your CRM resources is vital to providing world-class service in today's market," he said. "Every component has to work together with efficiency and flexibility in order for you to deliver a level of service that will satisfy customers."

The Aspect Customer Relationship Portal seamlessly ties together all of the customer-touching applications that affect or are affected by a call, e-mail, fax or Web interaction, such as front-office systems, back-office databases and telephony, e-mail, Web and WAP (wireless application protocol) servers. By doing so, this real-time eBusiness software platform helps ensure that anyone contacting a company at any time from anywhere in the world through any communication channel receives the response he or she is seeking.

"With an increasing number of Australians accessing the Internet, it was necessary for Western Power to enhance its CRM strategy to include multimedia," said Norm McKendry, Western Power's retail sales manager. "One of the key factors in choosing Aspect Communications was its clear technology path and vision in developing a platform for eBusiness solutions."

As the competitive electricity market in Western Australia deregulated, Western Power, Western Australia's leading energy corporation, found that upgrading its CRM strategy was critical. In fact, among top companies in the Australia and New Zealand region, 68 percent of respondents to a recent callcentres.net survey acknowledged the need to upgrade technology in their contact centers. Callcentres.net is a source of specialized research, analysis and industry information to the contact center industry.

Carlton and United Breweries has implemented an entire range of Aspect solutions to meet its requirements. According to Jennifer Speed, national manager of the customer support group at the company, Aspect was extremely supportive throughout the implementation process, and the two companies have a close working relationship.

"The big upside for us is the multimillions of dollars in profits at stake in the leisure and hospitality industry," Speed said. "With improved knowledge and technology, we can capture more of that using the Web and phone to build a closer relationship to the customer. With Aspect Communications, we have a true partnership."

Geoff Roberts, head of contact centers at BankWest, a full-service bank headquartered in Perth, Western Australia, said that in a core consumer service such as banking, customers must be able to establish contact easily and conveniently.

"With Aspect technology, BankWest can now reply to both electronic requests and phone calls more quickly and efficiently and make better decisions regarding service enhancements, which will result in improved relationships with customers and higher overall customer satisfaction," said Roberts.

Electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) solutions are playing an increasingly vital role in retaining and building customer relationships through all communication channels, according to Aspect's McNamee. "The mounting number of customer orders for the Aspect Portal validates this," he said. "The Aspect Portal is the only truly integrated eCRM solution for contact centers available on the market today."

The Aspect Customer Relationship Portal

The Aspect Customer Relationship Portal allows companies to build eCRM applications that integrate front- and back-office systems, eCommerce applications and multimedia contact centers into one centrally managed eBusiness system. The Aspect Portal Multimedia application unifies and personalizes customer interactions across Web, phone, fax and e-mail to identify, qualify, cross-sell, up-sell and route customers in real time. The CRMPower 2000 Golden Awards Committee recently named the Aspect Customer Relationship Portal as the Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Product of the Year.

Aspect Communications

Aspect Communications Corp. is the leading provider of customer relationship portals, a software platform for building and deploying eCRM applications that enable businesses to ensure consistent interactions with their customers from one centrally managed eBusiness system. Aspect's leadership position in customer relationship management solutions is based on its 15-year history and more than 7,600 customer contact center implementations. Aspect is headquartered in San Jose, with offices in major cities worldwide. For more information about Aspect, visit the company's Web site at http://www.aspect.com or call 877/621-3692 in the United States or [phone] in Australia.

Statements in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Examples include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Aspect's products' abilities to enable clients: to reply to electronic requests and phone calls more quickly and efficiently and make better decisions regarding service enhancements, resulting in improved relationships with customers and higher overall customer satisfaction, and to ensure consistent interactions with their customers from one centrally managed eBusiness system. Such statements also include statements regarding eCRM solutions playing an increasingly vital role in retaining and building customer relationships through all communication channels. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the company's current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: any unforeseen technical difficulties or product errors related to our products or connectivity to third parties' telephony, front-office and back-office systems; technological or market changes that affect the continued acceptance of the use of telecommunications or eCRM tools for conducting business transactions; and other factors and risks discussed in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended Dec. 31, 1999, the company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2000, and other filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update information concerning its expectations.

Note to Editors: Aspect, the Aspect logo, the phrase "The Starting Point for eBusiness" and the phrases and marks relating to other Aspect products and services discussed in this press release constitute one or both of the following: (1) registered trademarks and/or service marks of Aspect Communications Corp. in the United States and/or other countries or (2) intellectual property subject to protection under common law principles. All other names and marks mentioned in this document are properties of their respective owners.