Soft Surroundings Deploys Talisma Proactive Chat to Increase Online Sales

Business Wire, Dec 18, 2007

Emerging Leader in Quality Women's Apparel Gets Proactive with the Customer Experience

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Talisma[R] Corporation (www.talisma.com), the leading Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software solution provider, today announced that Soft Surroundings, a leading catalog and online retailer of apparel, bedding, and beauty products for busy women of all ages, has selected Talisma Proactive Chat in an effort to take advantage of untapped sales opportunities, increase the efficiency of its agents, and improve the overall experience of its customers.

Already a user of Talisma CIM solutions, Soft Surroundings is seeking to improve sales closure rates by proactively engaging customers during the shopping process, and by helping frustrated customers before they leave the Web site or contact Soft Surroundings via other, more costly, communication channels like the telephone.

The deployment of Talisma Proactive Chat comes at the right time, as data from the Talisma-sponsored Jupiter Research report titled "Proactive Customer Service - Strategies to Satisfy Customers and Drive Sales", reveals the serious need for proactive customer service. Nearly half of online consumers surveyed who abandoned a Web site said they would have been more likely to complete their purchase if the retailer had offered them some form of web based help.

"We pride ourselves on providing a personalized, quality experience for our customers, and utilizing proactive chat is another tactic that we believe will help us accomplish this," said Jim Manno, Contact Center Operations Manager of Soft Surroundings. "The comprehensiveness of this solution, coupled with our long-standing satisfaction with other Talisma Customer Interaction Management tools, helped make Talisma the obvious choice."

By using Talisma Proactive Chat, Soft Surroundings hopes to be able to increase sales by:

* Engaging high value customers or prospects at their moment of need

* Executing up-sell / cross-sell campaigns

* Reducing Web site and shopping cart abandonment

* Delivering relevant, personalized real-time offers

"Our experience powering 4 out of the 5 largest commercial chat implementations worldwide has proven that proactive chat is critical to succeeding in today's online retail marketplace and that it can significantly improve the customer experience," said Dan Vetras, President & CEO of Talisma. "While there are other proactive chat offerings on the market, the advantage Soft Surroundings has is that our offering is tightly integrated with the rest of our CIM suite like email, a self-service knowledge base, and VoIP, providing a set of innovative solutions that will enable them to effectively serve their customers both reactively and proactively across a range of channels."

About Soft Surroundings

Headquartered in St. Louis, Soft Surroundings is a leader in catalog and online sales of stylish yet comfortable women's clothing, luxury bedding & home products and state of the art cosmetics and beauty care. Having experienced record growth in its catalog channel, Soft Surroundings opened its first retail location in St. Louis, MO in November of 2005 and is expanding its retail division nationally to meet the needs of its many devoted customers. For more information, visit www.softsurroundings.com.

About Talisma Corporation

Talisma is the leading Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software solution provider enabling organizations globally to deliver an exceptional online customer experience while dramatically increasing their efficiency and effectiveness. Talisma's customers include Aetna, AOL, Canon, Citibank, Comcast, Dell, DHL, Ford, University of Notre Dame, Microsoft, Pitney Bowes, Siemens, Sony, and Sprint. Talisma is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and has offices located across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. For more information, visit www.talisma.com.