Netcall Regulatory News (NET)

7 Nov 2006 07:02

Netcall PLC07 November 2006 Netcall plc ("Netcall" or "the Company") Netcall Helps Affiniti Contact Centre Customers Beat Telephone Queues Affiniti OpenQueue now available Cambridge UK - 7 November; Netcall announces today a strategic partnership / OEM/ distribution agreement with Affiniti, which will offer Netcall's QueueBusterqueue management solution to its contact centre customers under the AffinitiOpenQueue brand. OpenQueue helps reduce call centre queues by offering callers the option ofaccepting an automated call-back, instead of waiting on hold. Affiniti alreadyuses OpenQueue with MM Teleperformance, the UK's third largest contact centreoutsourcer. Under the terms of the agreement, Affiniti will offer OpenQueue to its customersas a hosted service, so that customers need not invest in equipment. Thecall-back option can be tailored to meet particular customer service objectives,depending on a customer's specific requirements. OpenQueue helps organisations improve customer service levels in their contactcentres and reduce operating costs by maximising available agent resource. Itnot only cuts telephone waiting times for customers, but also presents thecaller's name to the agent, so that a personalised service is provided. Theapplication is achieving customer satisfaction ratings of up to 98%, cuttingabandoned call rates by up to 50% and reducing the length of calls by over 10%. Suzette Bouzane Meadows, Head of Contact Centre Solutions at Affiniti, said "Ourpartnership with Netcall fits perfectly with our strategy of offeringbest-of-breed technology solutions to help our customers improve servicedelivery. OpenQueue will help to alleviate a major cause of publicdissatisfaction with the call centre experience, namely waiting on hold. Thehosted service model makes it easy to deploy on a cost-per-use basis. It is agreat example of a technology application delivering a win-win solution fororganisations and their customers." Henrik Bang, CEO of Netcall concluded: "Our agreement with Affiniti is animportant milestone for Netcall, and very much in line with our strategy focusedon establishing QueueBuster as a key component of every customer-focused callcentre. We look forward to a long and productive relationship with Affiniti. Ourhosted QueueBuster service is proving very successful with our channel partners,allowing customers to adopt a 'pay as you go' approach with the potential toeasily scale up as required. The partnership with Affiniti will help to furtherestablish QueueBuster as the de facto industry standard for call backsolutions." All Netcall applications, including QueueBuster, run on the Netcall IntelligentCommunications Platform (ICP), which is built to industry standards to ensurefull cross-platform support. Netcall has integrated its solutions with allleading ACD platforms, carrier switches, network routing and CTI systems and isa member of the Avaya, Cisco and Nortel developer programmes. ends For further enquiries, please contact: ICIS Limited Tel. 020 7651 8688Tom MoriartyLaura Cocker About NetcallNetcall is a U.K. company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) ofthe London Stock Exchange. Based near Cambridge, Netcall develops and suppliesinnovative communication solutions to organisations of all sizes, including manyblue-chip companies with global contact centre operations. As the leadingspecialist in callback, auto-messaging and contact solutions, Netcall helpsorganisations globally to increase profits and productivity while improvingcustomer satisfaction and employee morale. Solutions are deployed either onsite or as hosted managed services usingNetcall's Intelligent Communications Platform (ICP). The company has more than adecade's experience owning and running a high-availability service platformco-located with international carriers. Netcall's customer list includes BT,BUPA, First Direct, Halifax, London Borough of Islington, Lloyds TSB, npower,Prudential, RBS (The Royal Bank of Scotland Group), Thames Water, UnitedUtilities and Vertex. Please visit www.netcall.com for more information. About AffinitiAffiniti, the communications integrator, specialises in designing, implementingand managing intelligent communications solutions for private and public sectororganisations. Some of its customers include: Experian, Carphone Warehouse, British Airways,Ford, Admiral Insurance, Edinburgh Telford College, Royal Liverpool & BroadgreenHospital, Cheshire Police, Citigroup, Lloyds TSB, Scottish Parliament and TNT. Affiniti is part of the Kingston Communications Group, which employs 2500 peopleacross the UK. The Group achieved revenues in 2006 of £453.9m. For further information see www.affiniti.com or contact: Dianne WhiteAffiniti01442 883370dianne.white@affiniti.comwww.affiniti.com This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange