February 2001

CustomerSat Releases WEBConnect Advantage
CustomerSat, Inc. has announced the release of WEBConnect Advantage, a bundled solution designed to help "e-tailer" businesses build and maintain online customer satisfaction. The hosted solution allows e-businesses to implement an automated, continuous feedback system for their Web site visitors and customers at key interaction points. Many research studies have pointed to the critical need for e-commerce companies to significantly improve the online customer experience in order to build a profitable e-business strategy. WEBConnect Advantage contains necessary elements to allow an e-commerce firm to automate its customer feedback program, including: design and deployment of two personalized surveys (Website Visitor Survey and Service Fulfillment Survey); real-time alerts attached to key survey questions; benchmark criteria; customizable business rules; personalized customer e-mail notices; targeted one-to-one communications; and full access to real-time analytics online. All data provided by the customer and Web site visitor can be incorporated into the company's customer contact system, furthering the personalization process. 

ClickDotCare And CosmoCom Announce Alliance
ClickDotCare and CosmoCom announced a strategic alliance in which ClickDotCare will provide consulting, outsourcing and ASP services to companies wanting the benefits from CosmoCom's technology, but who are looking for a partner to identify, implement and manage their contact center solutions. ClickDotCare, a provider of Web-enabled contact center services, has partnered with CosmoCom for its CosmoCall Universe platform to support its new, state-of-the-art, Web-enabled contact centers and multichannel development lab, which provide customer care for the Fortune 1000 and the E-100 markets. ClickDotCare offers next-generation consulting and multichannel customer service solutions for in-house, outsourced and co-sourcing initiatives. 

Apropos And Blue Martini To Partner
Apropos Technology and Blue Martini Software have announced a marketing and development alliance. The companies plan to integrate their products and participate in co-promotional, marketing and sales activities. Additionally, the two companies have completed integration between Apropos' Multimedia Interaction Management solution and the Blue Martini Customer Interaction System's Call Center module to help improve the delivery and use of end user information for contact center agents. With the integration, inbound customer queries, whether through phone, Web, kiosk or wireless device, can also be prioritized based on predefined criteria. Apropos Technology is a provider of multimedia interaction management solutions for e-business applications, and Blue Martini Software provides enterprise software applications aimed to help companies understand, target and interact with their customers. The solution will incorporate interactive voice response (IVR) prompts, e-mail parsing (sending the right e-mail messages to the right contact center representative) and direct integration with the Blue Martini Customer Interaction database. This direct integration enables access to customer, product and order information leading to screen pops and intelligent routing for call center agents. The solution also allows customers to make use of the system's self-service capabilities, enabling problem resolution without requiring an agent's time. The integration will provide business line managers with reporting and management tools that can result in lower support costs and translate into higher end-user satisfaction. 

OrderFusion And Enterworks Form Alliance
OrderFusion, Inc., a provider of e-commerce solutions for supplier enablement, and Enterworks, Inc., a developer of business process automation and content integration software for e-business portals and marketplaces, have announced a strategic marketing alliance between the two companies. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will co-market and promote each other's products through joint sales efforts and other marketing activities, and integrate their products to provide a solution for delivering an "out of the box" platform for sell-side exchanges. Enterworks Content Integrator provides dynamic, real-time content access and delivery for e-business applications such as portals and marketplaces. It enables companies to more easily add employees, partners, customers, suppliers, buyers and other users to portals and marketplaces without disrupting operations. Enterworks Content Integrator also allows companies to use their existing legacy data in its original format in their e-business applications and supports the easy migration of legacy data to modern, object-oriented systems. OrderFusion's Orders of Magnitude platform supports the selling process on the Web, from the presentation of product information, to sales, order management, support and sales analysis. It features nine modules built around a unified data model that helps suppliers' and buyers' sales processes by providing more accurate and consistent information throughout the process. Additionally, it complements enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and content management systems (CMS) by focusing on the entire sales order. The platform also allows suppliers to create personalized marketing campaigns for upselling and cross-selling, as well as analyze wins and losses to fine-tune their sales and marketing strategies. 

InstantService.com Offers New Features
InstantService.com, a provider of real-time Web-based communications technology and eCRM integration for e-commerce sites, has announced the release of three new features: Desktop Streaming, Smart Button and Reseller Administration. These features aim to provide users with competitive functionality to deliver to their customers. The Desktop Streaming capability allows clients to have shared desktop control with another remote desktop anywhere and anytime. With permission from the client, a Desktop Streaming host can see and control everything that is on their client's desktop and the client views all of the host's actions. The Smart Button allows the InstantService "chat" button to change its appearance and content based upon client agents' availability to accept chats. Whether all agents are busy or no agents are presently logged in, the Smart Button sends a special message to the customer. Once the link is placed on a Web site, no additional effort is required by the Web administrator to detect the availability of agents, and customers visiting a Web site are immediately aware of whether an agent is currently available. The Reseller Administration feature allows InstantService resellers to create, modify, delete and monitor end-user accounts. Accounts can be administered individually, or can be aggregated for billing and tracking purposes. InstantService.com offers live online interaction and helps facilitate customer acquisition and retention by enabling companies to conduct text-based chat sessions and push topical content to customers in real-time. The technology is delivered over the Internet via the ASP model, eliminating the need for e-commerce companies to purchase, install and maintain onsite hardware or software. InstantService.com integrates with automatic multilingual translation, e-mail management applications, VoIP, ACD/CTI, CRM back-ends and a variety of other technologies. 

APT Launches Suite For Online Brick-And-Mortar Channels
Applied Predictive Technologies (APT), a provider of adaptive customer relationship management (CRM) marketing optimization software platforms for online and brick-and-mortar businesses, has announced the launch of its Adaptive Marketing Suite version 1.0. The product suite was designed to leverage a company's existing CRM system or data-gathering efforts and predict customer behavior to help companies optimize marketing programs executed through multiple channels. The new two-product suite combines the company's existing software and technology with new features to help give businesses a marketing solution that can create rapid and sustained increases in sales. APT's software is built on an extensible, multialgorithm platform. By combining large-data, algorithmic techniques deployed for defense and national security applications with a cutting-edge modeling utility, APT created an advanced predictive technology product without excessive operating complexity. The products in the suite feature a patent-pending test and control interface that gives a user the ability to manage the extensible modeling platform, test marketing and retention campaigns and analyze program effectiveness. 

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