beCogent selects Genesys Voice Portal to help power its new beAssisted Managed Services offering

WOKINGHAM – 08 July 2004 – Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., a subsidiary of Alcatel (NYSE: ALA, Paris: CGEP.PA), has announced that beCogent – one of the UK’s leading providers of outsourced contact centre services - has selected the Genesys Voice Portal to help power its distinctive new beAssisted managed services offering. beAssisted combines the latest voice-enabled technology with support from beCogent’s live contact centre agents, and has been introduced to provide organisations with a blended service that can help cut customer interaction costs by between 30 and 50 per cent, effectively providing a cost-competitive alternative to outsourcing UK agent jobs to offshore locations.

With beAssisted, beCogent is extending its portfolio of outsourced contact centre services to provide its customers with a selection of fully-automated, blended and voice-to-Web solutions which can be delivered on a pay-per-usage model. Genesys Voice Portal’s advanced voice self-service capabilities provide the core self-service engine for the beAssisted solution, allowing beCogent’s clients to reach more customers, offer a consistent quality of care, and reduce their overall cost of customer service.

"When we started to develop our distinctive beAssisted proposition, we were determined to build a solution that combined the latest voice-enabled solutions," commented beCogent’s CEO, Ron Peerenboom. "Because Genesys Voice Portal is based on an open, Voice XML architecture, we’ve been able to integrate it with other best-of-breed technology components such as ScanSoft’s speech recognition and Rhetorical’s voice text to speech offerings, to create a unified solution that allows us to optimise our Web investments for voice.

"Working with the Genesys Voice Portal makes perfect sense for beCogent, it has allowed us to build a Managed Services approach which combines Voice XML technologies, multi-channel integration and full reporting to provide us with the resilience and scalability we need to support future growth," he continued. "In addition, we’ve integrated the Genesys Voice Portal solution with our extensive reporting and business analytical tools. We will offer our beAssisted Managed Service as a fully-blended solution available with either per-minute or per-transaction pricing."

"Genesys Voice Portal is all about reaching more customers, providing a consistently high level and quality of customer care, and reducing the cost of customer service," commented Mark Turner, Vice President for Genesys Telecommunications in the UK and Ireland. "As a leading outsourced contact centre operator, beCogent is a demanding user of customer service solutions, and we’re delighted that it has selected our Voice Portal technology to help power the new beAssisted offering. It’s also clear that our commitment to the open Voice XML standard makes Genesys Voice Portal an excellent component for integrated speech solutions."

With Genesys Voice Portal, self-service resources are deployed as virtual extensions of beCogent’s existing 1,000 plus live inbound and outbound agents at its contact centres in the UK. Thanks to Genesys Voice Portal technology, beCogent is able to provide its outsourcing customers with a 24/7 service, while freeing live agents from answering basic, repetitive questions and allowing them to concentrate on more complex customer interactions that demand human involvement. beCogent will focus its new beAssisted solution on transactions such as order-taking, surveys, address capture, brochure fulfilment, ticket booking and credit card payment, which make ideal applications for automated service. All callers always have the option to break out of their automated session and deal with a live agent at any time – ensuring that customers always remain in control.

About beCogent:

beCogent is a leading UK provider of outsourced contact centre services, and the first in a new generation of European contact centres focused on providing customers with both inbound or outbound multimedia services. Since the launch of beCogent in 1999, the company has grown quickly and now has over 1,300 employees and a turnover of almost £20 million. Over the last two years, beCogent has continued to set the standard for innovation, and is a leader in the implementation of developments such as workforce planning, VoIP, satellite contact centres, web-based scripting applications and an advanced data warehousing approach that supports integrated, historic and real time management information across all transactions and channels. For more information please visit www.becogent.com

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.:

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., a subsidiary of Alcatel, is focused 100 per cent on call centre software. Genesys recognises that better interactions drive better business and build company reputations. Customer service solutions from Genesys deliver on this promise for Global 2000 enterprises, government organisations and telecommunications service providers across 80 countries, directing more than 100 million customer interactions every day. Sophisticated routing and reporting across voice, e-mail and Web channels ensure that customers are quickly connected to the best available resource - the first time. Genesys offers solutions for customer service, help desks, order desks, collections, outbound telesales and service, and workforce management. Please visit Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc, for more information: www.genesyslab.com