[August 03, 2005]

New York Daily News Deploys Voice-Automated Self Services for Customer Care

VoicePort continues to increase customer satisfaction and ROI for newspaper circulation departments

Rochester, NY. June 29, 2005. VoicePort, LLC, a leading provider of self-service automated speech solutions for the newspaper industry today announced the start of live traffic at the New York Daily News. VoicePort leverages partners ScanSoft and VoiceGenie to help create its sophisticated speech recognition applications. After a successful trial period, The News, which is the fifth highest circulation newspaper in the United States, has instituted the CircPortTM product for its circulation call center.

The News, the most popular and highest circulation metropolitan newspaper in New York City, selected the solution to enhance service in its customer call center and reduce costs. The fully integrated, comprehensive self-service application now takes live subscriber calls to the newspaper�s circulation department, handling all routine transactions including reporting a delivery problem, placing a vacation hold, starting a new subscription, account status information and more.

Many industries have already begun using speech solutions for customer self-service, and it is the wave of the future. The move to speech in the publishing industry is only natural. Speech technology has advanced greatly in the last few years, and will only continue to improve. Speech is the most natural form of communication, so it�s no wonder that according to a Harris & Gartner Group study, 90% of people prefer it to current touchtone systems.

VoicePort�s solutions are designed to provide better customer service and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, which results in increased revenue from existing customers. In addition speech self-service applications can provide tremendous cost advantages compared to live agents. Automated systems can handle the routine low value-added requests, while agents can focus on more complicated value-added transactions. The key is to optimally match the application and the call with the appropriate and most cost effective service level required by the customer.

�We�ve been researching speech solutions that would ultimately reduce costly call center operation expenses while maintaining the level of customer satisfaction our customer�s expect� said Joe Pennisi, Vice President of Information Technology at the News. �. We selected VoicePort�s speech solution after extensive research, and we are very satisfied with the speed and ease in which the CircPortTM system was implemented.�

�We are delighted that the News selected VoicePort. Our systems are optimized to generate the best customer experience while providing a compelling Return on Investment (ROI) for the newspaper.� said Chris Mann, President of VoicePort. �This deployment takes our combined daily newspaper circulation base to over 1.6 million customers who regularly communicate to the newspaper through a VoicePort Speech self service solution.�

About VoicePort
VoicePort, LLC is a leading provider of advanced speech automation solutions for the publishing industry. Founded in January 2003 with a highly experienced team of speech engineers, the VoicePort team brings their many years of automation product development experience with large telecom companies to create robust, innovative applications for the publishing industry. Currently they are partnered with over twenty newspapers and are growing at a rate of three newspapers a month. VoicePort�s speech solutions include CircPortTM, AdPortTM and SpeechAttendantTM, and they have recently expanded to introduce WebPortTM a self-service application for the internet.

About the New York Daily News
The Daily News is New York City's highest-circulation tabloid and the fifth largest newspaper in the country. The News has a long history of excellence in journalism and news photography. Known as New York's hometown paper, the News focuses its coverage on what is happening in the boroughs of the city and is committed to covering New York through a range of investigative and original reporting and in publishing a paper that is vital, energetic and most important, accurate and fair.

VoicePort, LLC
1169 Pittsford-Victor Rd.
Ste. 200
Pittsford, NY 14534
www.voiceport.net

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