Press Release
FaceTime Communications Announces Agreement With America Online to Bring Consumers Real-time Access to Customer Care
FOSTER CITY, Calif., January 28, 2002 -- FaceTime Communications, a premier
provider of instant messaging (IM) solutions for business, today announced an
agreement with America Online (AOL) under which AOL will offer its partners the
ability to utilize a customer service application based upon FaceTime's Instant
Message Director server running on AOL® Instant Messenger (sm) (AIM). This
combined offering will allow consumers to contact call centers using AIM while
enabling companies to reduce their total service costs.
"We are excited to have the opportunity to deepen our relationship with AOL,
help them provide value-added, AIM-based solutions to its partners, and be part
of AOL's extensive portfolio of products and services," said Glen Vondrick,
FaceTime's President and CEO. "AOL's decision to work with FaceTime and our
Instant Message Director solution demonstrates the power of AIM as a direct
communications tool."
"We're happy to work with FaceTime to help make AIM even more valuable for
millions of consumers by giving them a fast and easy way to contact customer
service representatives," said Raul Mujica, Vice President and General Manager,
AOL Instant Messenger. "By offering a combined solution of AIM and FaceTime's
Instant Message Director customer service application, we can offer our
partners a dependable, trackable way to communicate with their consumers more
cost-effectively than before."
As one of the fastest growing communications channels, instant messaging
creates tremendous opportunities for Global 2000 businesses and the consumers
they serve. Running on top of AIM, the FaceTime Instant Message Director
ensures routing, queuing, transferring, escalation and auditing of agent and
customer AIM-based interactions similar to the way an Automatic Call
Distributor (ACD) manages telephony traffic. The FaceTime Instant Message
Director is offered as a hosted service or enables IT departments to install a
back-end software server behind their Internet firewall in order to manage and
monitor instant messaging communication across all major IM networks including
AIM.
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
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