EnvoyWorldWide Ups the Ante in Interactive, Two-Way Notifications; PACE and InPhonic Leverage EnvoyXpress 9.0 to Turn Notifications into Dialogues and Business Transactions

Business Wire, March 31, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 2003

EnvoyWorldWide, Inc., a leading provider of real-time interaction management services, today announced the availability of EnvoyXpress 9.0, the ideal interactive platform for delivering complex, two-way transactions to a variety of wired and wireless devices. EnvoyXpress 9.0 enables companies including PACE, the Partnership for Academic and Community Excellence, and InPhonic, a leading provider of communications software and services, to harness the power of a set of rich interactivity tools to enhance customer communications and service.

According to Giga Information Group, the two-way notification market is expected to reach $100M by 2006 with 14% CAGR. Giga cites the future growth of the market as being determined by the ability of vendors to deliver messages on a variety of wired and wireless devices, as well as offer the round trip interactivity to make a one-way communication a true transaction or dialogue. (Market Overview: Two-Way Intelligent Customer Alerts, John Ragsdale, January 24, 2003)

KEY FEATURES OF NEW FUNCTIONALITY

Extending EnvoyXpress' core mission to facilitate interactive voice and text interactions, the 9.0 release has been enhanced to fully complement interactivity options beyond simple binary dialogues and call transfers to operators, interactive voice responses (IVRs) and answering services. New features include:

-- Standard template surveying: Enables senders to build their

own survey flows via the EnvoyXpress API without support from

the EnvoyWorldWide application engineering team. Templates

allow surveys to be saved for future use.

-- Multiple question paths: Allows voice and text question paths

to be altered based on the answer to the previous question.

-- Offline response: Enables recipients of postal mail, fax,

pager or voice mail to use a designated URL or phone number to

provide responses to survey questions.

-- Numeric capture: Allows recipients to enter any series of

digits, followed by a pound sign in response to a question.

Senders can setup validation rules, which can be leveraged for

authentication in addition to response.

The new features in EnvoyXpress 9.0 can be combined to build a rich array of sophisticated and personalized applications including collections, customer satisfaction surveys, emergency communications and supply chain event management sequences. In addition, the release features two-way support for BlackBerry(TM) and WindowsCE-based devices.

CUSTOMER BENEFITS

The Partnership for Academic and Community Excellence (PACE), a longtime EnvoyWorldWide customer and innovator in voice-driven customer relationship management (CRM) for the K - 12 market is leveraging EnvoyXpress 9.0 to enhance its current one-way voice messages between schools and parents. With a primary focus on student safety and accountability, the ability to react in emergency situations and enhance communication between parents and school administrators, PACE wanted the option of soliciting responses, changing paths based on live connects, and offering multiple options with the ability to track response in real time. Since the rollout of EnvoyXpress 9.0, PACE has realized a measurable reduction in distribution time. Communications that used to require up to 8.5 hours now take a single minute.

"EnvoyWorldWide was chosen as PACE's integration partner largely because of its industry-standard API," said John Gamba, co-founder and director of PACE, "We are convinced that EnvoyWorldWide is uniquely positioned to partner with us for the long-term, to accommodate our growth and to contribute directly to the pursuit of our mission - to improve educational achievement in K-12 schools by leveraging the latest in simple yet effective communications technologies."

InPhonic, a leading provider of communications software and services that initially came to EnvoyWorldWide for automation of repetitive activation calls to its wireless phone customers was in search of an offering that would ensure that its customers experienced the highest levels of service. Given the overwhelming success of the activation campaign, InPhonic sought to initiate a voice-driven customer satisfaction survey without incurring the expense or resource of manual alternatives. Working with EnvoyWorldWide's Professional Services team, InPhonic built a 10-question survey, with every answer determining the next question. The dynamic assembly of voice elements and business logic inherent in the EnvoyXpress platform was put to use in a matter of days.

"Customer service and reduced churn are the keys to our success," said Frank Bennett, Chief Operating Officer of InPhonic "EnvoyWorldWide's platform has allowed us to extend our ebusiness platform to voice-only customers and customers who only check email infrequently. Real-time delivery of voice-based order status messages that involve the customer in decisions about their order can be more effective than email messages. Customer satisfaction surveys delivered by EnvoyWorldWide's voice system have a high response rate (initially, 10% of InPhonic's customers completed the survey). In addition, the survey also allows customers to elect to link directly to our call center agents for personalized assistance in real-time. This combination of intelligent automated messaging with live call center access is very effective. "