Brightware Introduces New Email Assistance Application.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

NOVATO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 2000

Brightware 3.5 Delivers Unmatched Productivity, New

Outbound Capabilities and Rapidly-Deployable Knowledge Packs for

Online Retailers and ISPs

Brightware, the leading supplier of eCustomer Assistance software for the Internet, today announced the availability of Brightware 3.5.

The email assistance application includes Brightware Assisted Answer, proprietary Single-Click Workflow, agent desktop enhancements, and new outbound capabilities with Bright Alert. The release also includes industry-specific knowledge packs that automate email responses for online retail and Internet Service Providers. Deployable within a week, Brightware 3.5 is the only solution to deliver maximum agent productivity and response consistency, providing customers the most scalable and high-performance email assistance solution available today.

&uot;Organizations of all sizes, from Internet start-ups to the Fortune 100, are struggling to improve their eCustomer communications through more effective interactions,&uot; said Beverly Ulbrich, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Brightware.

&uot;This new release extends Brightware's ability to provide increased productivity for companies striving to make customer service a key differentiator. The features of the 3.5 release: Knowledge Packs, Assisted Answer, Bright Agent Desktop, Bright Alert, and Single-Click Workflow are all designed to provide increased value and improved eCustomer satisfaction. This release underscores Brightware's commitment to making superior eCustomer Assistance a reality for today's demanding eCustomers.&uot;

&uot;As the revenue market leader in Internet commerce customer service and support applications, Brightware continues to provide leading applications that maximize productivity,&uot; said Albert Pang, Research Manager of International Data Corporation. &uot;To attract and retain customers, effective eBusinesses must offer optimal customer service and support. This solution from Brightware enables companies to address this critical need.&uot;

Brightware 3.5 New and Enhanced Features

Brightware's email assistance solution is designed to provide eCustomers the high-quality attention, accuracy, and intimacy they demand when dealing with online vendors. The new and enhanced features of Brightware 3.5 include:

Assisted Answer

The newly announced Assisted Answer offers substantial productivity gains, building on Brightware's established award winning email assistance solutions -- Brightware Contact Center and Automated Answer. Contact Center supports the complex routing, queuing, and supervision of incoming email messages, and Automated Answer automatically composes and responds to incoming email based on established criteria by leveraging Brightware's proven automation technology.

Assisted Answer is designed to automatically understand incoming messages, classify them for appropriate handling and dynamically compose replies that agents can then rapidly review, approve and send. Assisted Answer offers substantial productivity gains by elevating the consistency of an organization's email interactions, allowing all agents to be as productive and knowledgeable as the most experienced representative.

When an email message is received, Brightware's robust workflow ensures the message is appropriately classified, related information necessary from external systems is gathered and properly inserted into the appropriate response. The resulting, fully composed reply is then delivered to the agent's desktop based on sophisticated criteria such as message priority, agent skill set or territory. The agent then single-click reviews and sends the response. Or, for fastest response, the email can be issued directly to the eCustomer using Brightware's proven Automated Answer.

Bright Agent Desktop and Single-Click Workflow

At the desktop, the agent leverages Brightware's unique Single-Click Workflow coupled with the new Bright Agent Desktop to seamlessly review Brightware's automatically-composed responses, insert additional templates if desired, access customer history and deliver the response to the eCustomer. These workflow enhancements enable organizations to realize multiple benefits of agent productivity, reduced costs, and increased consistency throughout their eCustomer communications.

By focusing on agent usability with Brightware 3.5, this latest release to designed to maximize user acceptance providing all the information agents require on a single, intuitive desktop for quick access. As an added benefit of the newly designed Bright Agent Desktop, Brightware customers can expect lower training costs and further reduced ramp-up times when adding new personnel in their contact center environments.

Bright Alert

A complete eCustomer communication system requires the ability both to respond to incoming inquiries and to reach out to customers with relevant, personalized messages. Bright Alert provides this outbound capability, making email a complete, effective method for marketing to, selling to and servicing eCustomers.

Bright Alert leverages data from email interactions and Brightware Advice sessions to automatically compose and send personalized follow-up messages that continue the online dialog and strengthen eCustomer relationships. Examples of follow-up messages include sales confirmations, appropriate cross-sell or up-sell offers

-- or alternative product recommendations for visitors who drop off a site without making a purchase.

Retail and Internet Service Provider Knowledge Packs

In a separate release today, Brightware has added two new vertical solutions to its industry-focused Knowledge Packs which are designed to rapidly deploy best practices within Brightware customer environments. The Knowledge Packs leverage Brightware's proven experience in deploying email solutions that save customers valuable time and money.

SMTP POP3 Email Support

Brightware 3.5 also broadens it platform support to include SMTP POP3 email environments such as Lotus Notes in addition to Microsoft mail environments for service representative desktops running on Windows 95 and Windows 98. Brightware runs on Microsoft NT and integrates with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and databases that support ODBC.

With the release of Brightware 3.5, Brightware is providing customers additional options to extend their eCustomer Assistance solutions. Brightware customers derive benefits from a basic routing and queuing solution to a fully automated solution -- with control over which email types they want to manually review or fully automate. Plus, with Assisted Answer even those requests that are not fully automated have the benefit of Brightware classification based on customer specific information and business rules, external system integration for data retrieval, intelligent routing to the best resource, and fully composed responses from Brightware's standardized response templates.

About Brightware

Brightware is the leading supplier of eCustomer Assistance software for the Internet. Brightware email and Web applications help companies dramatically increase their eService levels and eSales revenues while reducing costs. Brightware's products, which can be deployed within a week, leverage proven automation technology to deliver unparalleled scalability and performance, ROI and an exceptional eCustomer experience. Brightware is the 1998 worldwide market leader in Internet commerce customer service and support software as measured by International Data Corporation. Brightware is also the 1998 worldwide market leader in email management systems as measured by Frost &Sullivan. For more information, please visit Brightware's Web site at http://www.brightware.com or call 800/532-2890.

Brightware is a registered trademark and Brightware Advice is a trademark of Brightware, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.