BT Contact Central to embed SmartNumbers to power cost and service metrics with a full-function multi-media CRM solution On Demand

London, England. October 2004

BT Contact Central OnDemand and SmartNumbers today announced a major OEM partnership for the integration and distribution of BT SmartNumbers as an integrated component of BT Contact Central OnDemand. Under this agreement, SmartNumbers will provide a tailored version of BT SmartNumbers to enhance and extend BT Contact Central OnDemand with a rich suite of telephony applications serving the contact-centre agent, administrators and service-level managers.

BT Contact Central OnDemand Multimedia integrates the market-leading capabilities of BT Contact Central OnDemand together with the full-function ACD, IVR, Wall-Boarding and agent statistics of the SmartNumbers Virtual Contact Centre.

The benefits this solution yields are very significant. For the first time, a full-function contact-centre and CRM solution are available instantly, On-Demand. Agents can be located in any part of the country or the world, and can be immediately part of an integrated service-desk. Service-level managers can allocate agents into teams and queues as required, and agent efficiency metrics and service-level attainment can be seen in real-time with web-based wall-boarding.

Using this solution, contact-centres benefit from the following:

• Dramatically reduce the cost of service-provisioning by enabling agents to be located in the most cost-effective locations, or from home
• Reduce agent churn through flexible working and other benefits
• Ensuring the productivity of remote agents can be measured as effectively as those agents located in a single location

The above is achieved through the tight integration of BT Contact Central On-Demand with BT SmartNumbers to provide real value to a number of constituencies:

For the Agents

• Full outbound-dialling with embedded click-to-dial buttons on customer or contact records within BT Contact Central On-Demand.
• Inbound-calls result in a screen-pop of customer contact records
• Automatic presentation of appropriate call-scripts to use for each inbound or outbound calls
• Full flexible-working capabilities, enabling agents or support personnel to connect from any location (office, home, remote, mobile) and instantly be part of the virtual service-delivery team

For Service-Level Managers

• Standard call-centre telephony capabilities (call handling, delegating, skill-based routing, IVR)
• Real-time wall-boarding and agent statistic
• Real-time configuration of queues, agents and teams to ensure maximum service-level attainment based on current resource availability
• Broadcast voice, email and SMS messages to all team members simultaneously - irrespective of location
• Establishment of follow-the-sun helpdesks with no hardware, software or infrastructure cost

“Standalone, both products are very powerful in their own right, and our customers were gaining significant value in deploying them On Demand. However, the capabilities of these as a combined solution is yielding greater benefit still,” said Simon Batley, Head of BT Contact Central OnDemand. “By having every aspect of today's most advanced call-centres available on demand, from CRM, flexible working, agent and service-level management ensures that BT Contact Central can drive the highest level of productivity with zero capital expenditure and immediate availability.”

“The United States have led the way with proving the model for OnDemand Contact Centres,” said Geoffrey Paterson, CEO of SmartNumbers. “Overall quality of service can increase dramatically when the hiring pool for agents is expanded right across the country. In addition, agent churn can fall from 45% average today to less than 10% with On-Demand. The combination of improved service-levels, lower cost and reduced churn amounts to the Holy Grail of contact-centre management, and we're delighted that BT have chosen to partner with SmartNumbers to bring this important solution to market.”

About BT

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions serving customers in Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. Its principal activities include IT and networking services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services.

BT consists principally of three lines of business:

• BT Retail, providing fixed and mobile communications services and solutions and IT and networking services to more than 20 million business and residential customers in the UK. It is also a leading UK internet services provider.
• BT Wholesale, providing network services and solutions within the UK to more than 600 fixed and mobile operators and service providers including the provision of broadband, private circuits.
• BT Global Services, providing IT and networking services internationally to meet the needs of multi-site organisations with European operations. BT Global Services operates in more than 130 countries and also offers international carrier services.

In the year ended 31 March 2004, BT Group's turnover was £18,519 million with profit before goodwill amortisation, exceptional items and taxation of £2,013 million.

BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. For more information, visit www.bt.com/about.