Aspect Portal Key to Improving Garlands' Customer Relationships and Attracting New Business; Software Enables Company's Delivery of New Outsourced, Multichannel CRM Service.

Business Editors/Technology Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif./STOCKLEY PARK, U.K.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2000

Aspect Communications Corporation (Nasdaq:ASPT), the leading provider of customer relationship portals, today announced that the core eBusiness platform behind Garlands' new customer relationship management (CRM) service is the Aspect(R)Customer Relationship Portal.

Garlands is a leading outsourced contact center operator in the United Kingdom.

The new CRM service extends the call-handling service Garlands already provides to its clients by allowing customer contacts to be handled at any time of the day, using the customer's choice of channel (i.e., voice, e-mail, Web, etc.).

At the heart of Garlands' eBusiness operation, the Aspect Portal blends customer interactions across Web, phone and e-mail into a single, manageable queue and handles each one intelligently according to a set of user-defined business rules. In this way, Garlands is able to prioritize and personalize customer contacts, route the contacts in real time and create new opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell by gaining a better understanding of the needs of its clients' customers.

In order to schedule agents to specific campaigns more efficiently and hence increase their productivity, Garlands has also invested in Aspect eWorkforce Management software. By using this software in conjunction with the Aspect Portal, Garlands is able to schedule staff more effectively to ensure customers can make contact at any time, from whatever location and using whatever device they choose - and receive the responses they are seeking.

"At Garlands, we are committed to building a knowledge-based business by investing in people and infrastructure in order to secure a client base of world-class partners," said Chey Garland, chief executive of Garlands. "To achieve this, we must be able to demonstrate added value to our partners, and the Aspect Portal has provided us with the ability to do this - as well as establish a key competitive advantage in the marketplace."

"Our ability to handle multimedia contacts efficiently and intelligently is second to none in the outsourced contact center business," she added. "Since the Aspect Portal was installed, we've increased the number of e-mails handled and vastly improved the quality of e-mail handling. Our new CRM capabilities have been key to both improving existing customer relationships as well as attracting new client business."

"Whether they are Web-enabling the contact centers of brick-and-mortar companies or contact center-enabling the Web sites of dot-coms, outsourcers are at the forefront of the eBusiness revolution," said Beatriz Infante, Aspect president and CEO. "By investing in the Aspect Portal and Aspect eWorkforce Management, Garlands has built a solid eBusiness infrastructure, which will benefit its agents, its clients and its clients' customers."

Garlands

Starting as a commercial debt collection agency in 1980, Garlands diversified into contact center outsourcing when it established a 20-agent contact center operation in 1996. By October 2000, this number had grown to about 600 agents working on inbound and outbound tasks across multiple media (voice, fax, e-mail and Web) for a wide variety of blue chip client companies. Garlands' flexibility to meet sudden increases in customer contacts, to provide data and resources quickly to assist with special client campaigns and to provide targeted teams to overcome clients' specific business issues makes it one of the UK's most effective contact centers. Its vast call-handling expertise and unshakeable commitment to delivering quality results enables clients to invest their time and money into planning the bigger picture. Garlands is headquartered in Hartlepool, Teesside, with offices in Stockton on Tees and Middlesborough. For more information, go to www.cjgarland.co.uk.

Aspect Communications

Aspect Communications Corporation 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, Calif., with offices in major cities worldwide. The UK office is based in Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex. For more information about Aspect, visit the company's Web site at http://www.aspect.com or call 1-877-621-3692 in the United States or 020 8589 1000 in the UK.

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 Corporation 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.

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: improve clients' customer relationships and attract new business; schedule agents to specific campaigns more effectively and hence increase their productivity; ensure customers can make contact at any time, from whatever location, using whatever device they choose, and receive the responses they are seeking; benefit agents, clients and the clients' customers; and enable businesses to ensure consistent interactions with their customers from one centrally managed eBusiness system. 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 December 31, 1999, the company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2000, and other filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update information concerning its expectations.