Nortel Speeds Up Response Times to Customers at Nespresso's Contact Center

Nortel(1) (TSX: NT)(NYSE: NT) has set up new self-service voice capabilities for Nestle Nespresso, the worldwide pioneer in premium portioned coffee and one of the fastest growing operating units of the Nestle Group. By means of these new self-service voice capabilities, Nespresso is able to reduce customer waiting times and cut annual Customer Relationship Center costs by up to 16 percent. Customer Relationship Center is the name Nespresso uses for its contact center.

With Nortel's automated speech recognition technology, Nespresso can now offer its customers faster response to their inquiries through an easy-to-use service hotline. Instead of being placed on hold to wait for the next available coffee specialist, customers can complete either all or part of their order through voice prompts. This results in reduced waiting times and leads to enhanced customer satisfaction. The voice system is multilingual in German, French and Italian and allows Nespresso to cut contact center costs by completing more calls with the same number of agents.

"At Nespresso, we aim for the highest quality in everything we do and part of that strategy is to ensure our customers can address their concerns and place their orders as fast and efficiently as possible. Our coffee specialists in the Relationship Centre in Sion handle more than 300,000 calls a year," said Marc-Alain Dubois, market director Switzerland, Nespresso. "With the new Nortel solution we can offer our customers a comprehensive personal service without long wait times even in peak periods. That is an important factor in driving the success of the Nespresso brand."

"Nortel has worked with Nespresso to meet its communications needs for many years, and again they turned to us when they were looking to increase productivity at their Customer Relationship Center and reduce operating costs," says Thomas Marfurt, country manager, Nortel Switzerland. "With Nortel's self-service, voice response technology, we were able to design new communications capabilities for Nespresso that could be easily incorporated into their existing technologies to help them meet huge call volumes without employing more coffee specialist agents."

Nespresso has initially launched the new self-service voice capabilities for its 180-agent Customer Relationship Center near Lausanne, Switzerland, where nearly two-thirds of the incoming calls are answered in German, about one-third in French and the rest in Italian. The center relies on Nortel's Media Processing Server (MPS) 500 speech recognition platform with high reliability through instantaneous back if any component fails. The system also uses Nortel Communication Server (CS) 1000 with intelligent, automatic routing to the most appropriate agent through Nortel's Contact Center solution. Extension of the system to a number of additional international Customer Relationship Centers is currently being planned.

Nespresso has had a Nortel voice solution with over 300 TDM and VoIP phones in use for several years.

About Nestle Nespresso SA

Nestle Nespresso SA, the worldwide pioneer and market leader in highest-quality premium portioned coffee, introduced consumers to the very highest quality Grands Crus to be enjoyed in the comfort of their own homes, as well as to be savoured at locations outside the home, such as gourmet restaurants, upscale hotels, luxury outlets and offices. What transpired was the creation of the unique Nespresso trilogy, a unique combination of the world's highest-quality Grands Crus coffees, smart and stylish coffee machines and exceptional customer service. The culmination of these three elements came to be known as the Nespresso Ultimate Coffee Experience. Headquartered in Paudex, Switzerland with more than 2,500 employees, Nestle Nespresso SA sells products in more than 50 countries directly to its customers and at the end of 2007 operated more than 117 prestigious boutiques in key cities around the world. For the second year in a row, it was named the fastest growing company within the Nestle Group and one of its "billionaire brands", having achieved a growth rate of more than 40 percent in 2007. For more information, visit www.nespresso.com (2).

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com . For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news .

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