Press Release

FaceTime Delivers Enterprise Call Center Solution For Rapid Problem Resolution

Solution Leverages Instant Messaging and Real-time Presence Detection to Reduce Costly Escalations

FOSTER CITY, CA - June 4, 2001 -- FaceTime Communications, the premier provider of Instant Messaging (IM) applications for business, today announced a solution that addresses the challenge of call escalations and resolution of customer issues within high-volume telephony contact centers. Call centers can now deploy the FaceTime Instant Message Director to ensure immediate access to the appropriate knowledge experts throughout the enterprise at the right time when solving customer issues.

Managers of distributed Global 2000 contact centers now have a sophisticated solution to address costly and frustrating telephone call escalations between various levels of an organization's customer support. FaceTime's pioneering IM technology for business applications facilitates on-the-job call agent learning, dramatically improves accuracy of responses, and reduces contact center operational expenses to ensure service-level performance, even at reduced staffing levels. By streamlining customer service escalation, FaceTime makes it possible for companies to dramatically improve the quality of customer contact while utilizing knowledge experts more efficiently, appropriately, and economically.

"FaceTime Communications is the first to market an IM-based application designed to reduce costly escalations in technology and financial services contact centers," said Glen Vondrick, CEO of FaceTime Communications. "CRM and knowledge base technologies alone do not address the real-time need for complex, time-sensitive problem resolution in multi-tiered telephone contact centers. People are the most important source of knowledge and automated technologies are limited in accessing human expertise in real-time. FaceTime's Instant Message Director is a cost effective software solution that seamlessly integrates into contact center processes for critical customer care while, at the same time, reducing costs."

The FaceTime Instant Message Director solves challenges such as unavailable agents, dropped calls during transfers, long hold times and repetitive information capture with multiple agents. It enables access to scarce and valuable experts for time-sensitive critical problem solving through real-time identification, on-line agent presence detection and immediate problem collaboration and resolution with the right expert at the right time. Dedicated level two agents can now manage simultaneous call escalations with Instant Message Director, enabling contact centers managers to more effectively allocate expensive resources while maintaining service levels.

The FaceTime Instant Message Director for call centers also meets the following requirements for enterprise escalation deployments:

Instant Message Director Server: A powerful, scaleable and reliable server which provides access to dedicated and non-dedicated knowledge workers in addition to:
- Administration Services: auditing, monitoring, and data warehousing.
- Management Services: enabling access to knowledge workers based on business rules, online presence, and configuration management.
- Gateway Services: Detecting presence and extending access over Public and Enterprise IM networks, telephony systems, e-mail and other emerging channels and networks.
Agent Workstation: FaceTime's Enterprise IM Workstation that provides dedicated agents with an intuitive user interface for:
- Managing multiple knowledge-sharing interactions
- Detecting the presence of dedicated and non-dedicated experts on multiple IM networks including AOL AIM, Microsoft MSN and Yahoo! Messenger
- Accessing history of knowledge sharing interactions
- Integrated Web Browser
- Three-way conferencing
- Supervisor capabilities including broadcasting, real-time monitoring and load balancing
Enterprise IM Gateway: Enables presence detection and access to distributed experts over IM networks from within FaceTime's Enterprise IM Workstation.

Instant messaging is the fastest growing communications channel to date. According to IDC, by 2004, more than 400 million enterprise clients will be using IM to generate 2 trillion instant messages between consumers and businesses. In addition, Forrester Research estimates that the average cost of a contact center call costs a business approximately $33 per call, whereas an IM session costs about $7.33 per session. Instant messaging creates tremendous opportunities for Global 2000 businesses, and FaceTime is positioned to help its partners and customers capitalize on this opportunity. FaceTime Communications solutions are now available to customers globally.

About FaceTime Communications
FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of instant messaging, Web usage and Unified Communications platforms. Ranked number one by IDC for four consecutive years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 900 customers – including nine of the 10 largest U.S. banks – for security, management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships with all leading public and enterprise IM network providers, including AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Skype, IBM and Jabber.

FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more information visit http://www.facetime.com or call 888-349-FACE. The FaceForward blog, at http://blog.facetime.com, offers thoughts and opinions about the changing nature of Internet communications.

PR Contact:

Emily Chamberlin
650-762-2945
echamberlin@ar-edelman.com