FOSTER CITY, CA - June 25, 2001 -- Amica Mutual
Insurance Company, the nation's oldest mutual insurer of
automobiles, has chosen FaceTime Communications, the premier
provider of instant messaging for businesses, to provide real-time
communications and Web inbound IM-routing capabilities for its 100
seat corporate office Service Center. The result will be a suite of
applications that improve on-line customer satisfaction through
innovative instant messaging technology, making Amica the customer
service leader in the insurance industry. "We conducted a lengthy
evaluation of many vendors in the customer service technology
sector," said Margaret Munroe, Amica's Assistant Vice President of
Corporate Communications. "FaceTime's interface to the AOL and MSN
networks, their vision of IM within the call center, as well as
their flexibility to integrate chat, E-mail, IM, and other
features, such as Web-based call-back, were the key reasons that
FaceTime's instant messaging technology appealed to us. In
addition, FaceTime's success with customers like Bank One and
Compaq solidified our confidence in FaceTime's ability to offer our
customers another important means of contact." Amica will utilize
FaceTime's Instant Message Director to help obtain new business in
its auto insurance product line, and for some claim reporting. In
order to achieve this, Amica will use the FaceTime public IM
gateway service under the BizBuddy name, AskAmica, which will give
their customers the flexibility to contact Amica's call center
using their familiar AOL instant messenger. The company will
combine this with FaceTime's Web-based callback feature, which
allows Amica's agents and customers to escalate an instant
messaging session to voice. Server scalability, IM technology, and
the flexibility of having the option to bring the solution in-house
to Amica at a later date were all important components for choosing
the FaceTime Instant Message Director. "The decision by Amica
Insurance to select FaceTime is an important validation of our
vision of the importance of Instant Messaging networks to extend
time-sensitive communication throughout the enterprise," said Glen
Vondrick, President and CEO of FaceTime. "Amica's vision that
Web-based chat must also extend connectivity with the public
Instant Messaging networks to reach beyond the call center further
demonstrates that IM is an integral part of time-sensitive,
critical customer communications across many different industries."
Instant messaging is the fastest growing communications channel in
history. According to IDC, by 2004, over 400M clients will be using
instant messaging to generate 2 trillion instant messages between
consumers and businesses. Global 2000 contact center CRM budgets
are predicted to be over $12 billion. Forrester Research states
that by 2002, consumers will get answers to customer service
queries by using instant messaging tools from the likes of AOL and
Microsoft to link to agents and companies' knowledge bases. This
channel will rapidly displace browser-based customer service chat
systems. In addition, Forrester estimates that the average cost of
a phone call to a contact center costs a business approximately $33
per call, whereas an instant messaging session costs about $7.33
per session. Instant messaging creates tremendous opportunities for
Global 2000 businesses, and FaceTime is positioned to help their
partners and customers capitalize on this opportunity.
About Amica
Amica Mutual Insurance Company is the nation's oldest mutual
insurer of automobiles, and was founded in 1907. The company, with
corporate headquarters in Lincoln, Rhode Island, is a national
writer of automobile, homeowners, marine, and personal excess
liability insurance. Life coverage is available through Amica Life
Insurance Company, a wholly owned subsidiary. Amica employs more
than 3,400 people in 42 offices across the country.
About Actiance, Inc. (Formerly FaceTime Communications, Inc.)
FaceTime Communications became Actiance, Inc on January 11, 2011 following an agreement to
transfer the FaceTime trademark to Apple.
FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of Unified Communications and Web 2.0,
including instant messaging, blogs and social networking. Ranked number one by IDC for five consecutive
years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 1,500 customers for the security,
management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships
with all leading IM, unified communications providers and social networks including AOL, Google, Yahoo!,
Skype, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more information visit
http://www.facetime.com or call 888-349-3223.
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