Bath & Body Works Proves Value of Customer Focus, Technology Investment.

Company Partners with Astute Solutions to Deliver Best-In-Class Service

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Driving profitability by delivering exceptional consumer interactions earned Bath & Body Works (BBW) Call Center IQ's "Best-in-Class Call Center" award. BBW achieved this distinction with the help of its technology partner, Astute Solutions.

Call Center IQ, a division of the International Quality & Productivity Center, honors call centers leveraging best-in-class practices to achieve singular results. It selected BBW for transforming its customer contact center to a profit center by implementing a purely customer-centric strategy.

"At Bath & Body Works, the lifetime loyalty of the customer is at the core of our strategy," said Pati Crowley, director, customer experience, Bath & Body Works. "With the help of Astute Solutions, we've achieved the results every company strives for -- exceptional customer relationships and an extraordinary return on our technology investment. Our CSR compliment to complaint ratio is 25-to-1."

BBW's customer-centric culture, strategy and business practices also are recognized as best-in-class in a new AberdeenGroup benchmark report entitled "The Contact Center as a Profit Center: Optimizing a Contact Center with Speech, VoIP, Data Integration and Performance Analytics."

"Our research tells us that overall customer satisfaction has more to do with the overall experience than with call completion and first call resolution rates. This is why enterprises are investing in contact center optimization," said Russ Klein, research director, Enabling Technology Practice, Aberdeen Group. "Best-in-class companies like Bath & Body Works know that a high quality service experience builds customer satisfaction, brand awareness and loyalty."

In the report, responses from call center, customer experience and operations executives revealed a number of emerging practices that separate best-in-class companies from the rest. These include measuring performance based upon the overall customer experience, designating a customer experience advocate, training live operators to understand self-service components of the contact center, and leveraging technology and network infrastructure to create value added services.

"At Astute Solutions, we develop advanced technologies for companies that understand the potential of the contact center and its ability to favorably impact every aspect of the business. This is why our relationship with Bath & Body Works is so strong. The company is a valuable partner and a true innovator," said Astute Solutions President and CEO, Joseph Sanda.

The BBW strategy and technology mix empowers agents with the tools and decision making latitude needed to enhance relationships through proactive service. This includes issuing and managing gift cards, coupons and compensation. It also enables the contact center to measure and quantify the return on investment (ROI) for their services -- a key distinction. According to Aberdeen's findings, 60 percent of companies report difficulty measuring and evaluating their contact center performance in the areas that increase customer satisfaction.

BBW transformed its contact center into a primary channel for customer-facing interaction, revenue generation and branding with Astute Solutions' ePowerCenter. This customer interaction and relationship management solution enables high touch, high quality service interactions. It provides BBW agents with the tools they need to resolve issues quickly, while personalizing the experience for the caller. Additionally, the BBW contact center:

* Generates customer insight and business intelligence.

* Integrates customer, contact center, field (1500+ stores), and internal business processes.

* Communicates insights and event trends to the entire organization through expansive reporting.

* Measures its services' successes for incremental return on investment (ROI).

* Course-corrects or recognizes great service experiences in a real-time environment.

Qualified registrants can download a complimentary copy of the AberdeenGroup benchmark report (courtesy of Astute Solutions) by accessing the following link: http://www.astutesolutions.com/aberdeenreport

About Bath & Body Works

Bath & Body Works (BBW) offers the most luxurious beauty wellbeing and spa products in their more than 1,500 stores nationwide. BBW's vast assortment of brands represent the best-in-class authority in fragrant bath and body care, facial skincare, hair, spa and home and include C.O. Bigelow, Patricia Wexler MD Dermatology, Aquatanica Spa, Breathe, Aromatherapy and True Blue Spa.

Bath & Body Works was founded in New Albany, Ohio in the fall of 1990, and has always prided itself on the innovation, quality and performance of its products. It is a division of Limited Brands, Inc.

About Astute Solutions

Through its award-winning consumer interaction and case management solutions, Astute Solutions enables consumer-focused companies to differentiate through service excellence. Its PowerCenter[TM] product family includes solutions for solving day-to-day consumer interaction challenges and enabling high quality consumer experiences. It optimizes operations through immediate, actionable feedback, while meeting the complex technical requirements of the enterprise. PowerCenter combines best-of-breed interaction, knowledge and relationship management capabilities to deliver the deep functionality today's B2C companies demand. Astute Solutions' Global 1000 customers include: McDonald's, British Airways, Levi Strauss & Co., L'Oreal USA, Scott's, GlaxoSmithKline, Neutrogena, Abbott Labs, Dunkin' Brands, and Sara Lee Branded Apparel. For further details, visit www.astutesolutions.com or call [phone].