Customer Trust: Reviving Loyalty in a Challenging Economy.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 19, 2002

Pivotal Webcast Event Featuring Harley Davidson and Contact Center

Guru, Dr. Jon Anton Offers Advice on Regaining Trust

With the daily barrage of corporate misconduct and boardroom blunders, it is no surprise that consumer and market confidence is in a downward spiral. So the question is, can companies take action to revive customer trust and ultimately improve their profitability despite the challenging business environment?

Pivotal Corporation (Nasdaq:PVTL) (TSX:PVT), the leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software for mid-sized enterprises, hosted a Webcast addressing this topic. The event featured contact center guru, Dr. Jon Anton, director of benchmark research at Purdue University; John Lucas, vice president and CIO, Harley-Davidson Financial Services; and Bo Manning, president and CEO, Pivotal. The Webcast entitled, "Trust is Dead: How to Revive Customer Loyalty in Today's Economy," was moderated by strategic consultant and Pivotal board member, Christopher Lochhead, LOCHHEAD Corporation.

For access to the Webcast, please visit: http://www.pivotal.com/executive_center/pivotaltv/pivotal.asp - feature.

"The good news is, trust is not dead - it can be revived through CRM," said leading contact center guru, Dr. Jon Anton. "Companies today can absolutely build trust and profitability despite the economy - and they can do this by delivering on their promises. Market leaders are turning to CRM technology to empower their employees with the tools and processes to help them better deliver on customer commitments and ultimately, build long-term relationships."

Building Trust That Lasts a Lifetime

Harley-Davidson Financial Services (HDFS) has leveraged CRM technology to maintain long-term and trusting relationships. According to HDFS executive, John Lucas, "We have invested heavily in the customer experience because it goes back to the core values that we live and uphold ourselves to everyday. We are passionate about our customers; passionate about how our customers are using our products and services; and passionate about building trusting, long-term customer relationships. Ultimately, we are committed to providing value to our riders, and helping enhance the Harley-Davidson experience they've come to cherish."

Customer-centric companies, like HDFS, have discovered that long-term relationships are created through continuous, consistent customer contact. This means communicating with customers whenever, wherever, and however they prefer. To accomplish this, companies must build an environment where customer inquiries are handled quickly and accurately over the telephone, Internet, fax, Web chat, or face-to-face.

According to Anton, "Every time a customer reaches out to a company through one of the technology touch-points, the company has an opportunity to build trust. The beauty of today's CRM technology is the analytic ability to take all of the information gathered through the touch-points and learn not only about the individual customer, but also about what the company can do to make the customer experience more fulfilling and valuable over time."

CRM as a Trust Enabler

According to Pivotal chief executive, Bo Manning, "The challenging economic environment has made trust a central issue for all corporate executives. Customer trust boils down to keeping the promises that you make to your customers and doing that consistently over time. CRM is a key enabler to fulfilling promises - it allows a company to remember its promises, act on its promises, and keep its promises to continually meet the customer's expectations."

Manning's view is that building trust and profitability in today's environment requires three things. First, get very clear about the customer experience the company is trying to build. Second, get very clear about the technology the company is going to use to get there. And third, institutionalize metrics in order to track progress.

The Contact Center: The Epicenter of the Customer Experience

Dr. Jon Anton has been researching the role of contact center technology and how this technology can improve customer experiences and build customer trust. According to Anton, "For many companies the contact center has become the heart of an organization because the data collected in these contact centers and the relationships built here, persist over time - and it is really over time that a company builds trust, loyalty and eventually profitability."

About Pivotal Corporation

Pivotal Corporation is the only CRM company that is 100 percent purpose-built to serve the unique requirements of mid-sized enterprises. Pivotal delivers software and services that produce meaningful increases in revenues, margins and customer loyalty for companies and business units in the revenue range of $100 million to $3 billion. More than 1,500 companies around the world use Pivotal including: CIBC, Centex Homes, HarperCollins Publishers, Hitachi Telecom Inc., Premera Blue Cross, Royal Bank of Canada, Southern Company, and Vivendi.

Pivotal's complete CRM software suite includes capabilities in marketing, sales, service, contact centers, partner management and interactive selling. For more information, visit www.pivotal.com

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results of events to differ materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors, such as the need to develop, integrate and deploy applications to meet our customer's requirements, the possibility of development or deployment difficulties or delays, the dependence on our customer's satisfaction with Pivotal's CRM software, its continued commitment to the deployment of the solution, and the risks involved in developing software solutions and integrating them with third-party software and services. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, individual results may vary, and we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements or other future events. Moreover, neither we nor anyone else assumes responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of forward-looking statements.

(C) 2002 Pivotal Corporation. All rights reserved. Pivotal is a registered trademark of Pivotal Corporation. All other trade names mentioned are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.