FOSTER CITY, Calif., August 14, 2001 -- FaceTime Communications,
the premier provider of instant messaging (IM) applications for
business, today announced that it has entered into a marketing
alliance with eLoyalty (Nasdaq: ELOY), the leading management
consulting and systems integration company focused exclusively on
building customer loyalty. As part of this alliance, eLoyalty will
leverage FaceTime's Instant Message Director as part of their
managed services offerings to provide call centers with the ability
to improve first call resolution by enabling time-sensitive problem
solving and rapid escalation to appropriate knowledge
resources.
Managers of distributed Global 2000 contact centers can now
utilize eLoyalty's expertise in building integrated call center
solutions in combination with FaceTime's sophisticated IM
application to eliminate costly and frustrating telephone call
escalations between various levels of an organization's customer
support system. FaceTime's IM technology facilitates on-the-job
call agent learning, increases accuracy of responses, and reduces
contact center operational expenses to ensure service-level
performance. By streamlining customer service escalation, FaceTime
enables companies to dramatically improve the quality of customer
contact while utilizing knowledge experts more efficiently,
appropriately, and economically.
"FaceTime values eLoyalty's ability to fully integrate
leading-edge call center solutions such as CRM applications,
intelligent call management software, email management and
knowledge base technology with FaceTime's next-generation
enterprise IM applications" said Glen Vondrick, President and CEO
of FaceTime Communications. "By partnering with eLoyalty, FaceTime
will enable integration of IM for rapid problem resolution, call
routing and IM presence-detection to identify, locate, and share
knowledge with distributed experts within the enterprise."
Fortune 1000 companies rely on eLoyalty for integrating and
deploying loyalty solutions requiring consolidation of customer
contact channels, including the telephone, IM, the Internet,
e-mail, field sales and field service. FaceTime provides an
enterprise software server that automates finding the right
knowledge experts, routes instant messages, and queues traffic to
those experts, all while capturing the knowledge shared throughout
the interactions for future use. The Instant Message Director also
includes enterprise level administration and management services
such as auditing to a data warehouse, session monitoring,
configuration management, and access to knowledge workers based on
business rules and on-line presence.
"Corporations are now recognizing the tremendous value and power
of applying instant messaging for business," said Jay Istvan,
Senior Vice President for Strategy and Marketing at eLoyalty.
"FaceTime's unique approach to providing seamless access to public
IM networks, such as AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! for time-sensitive
problem resolution in the call center adds significant value to our
suite of solutions."
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 eLoyalty
eLoyalty is a leading management consulting and systems
integration company focused exclusively on building customer
loyalty. With professionals in offices throughout North America,
Europe and Australia, eLoyalty's broad range of enterprise Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) related services and solutions
include creating business strategies, defining technical
architectures, selecting, implementing and integrating
best-of-breed CRM software applications, and providing on-going
support for multi-vendor systems. The combination of eLoyalty's
methodologies and technical expertise enables eLoyalty to deliver
the tangible economic benefits of customer loyalty for our Fortune
1000 clients. For more information, please go to the Company's web
site at www.eloyalty.com or call 877-2-ELOYAL.
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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