COSMOCOM LAUNCHES COSMOVANTAGE™ MARKET SUCCESS PROGRAM

First Program to Guide Telcos in Marketing Hosted Contact Center Services

MELVILLE, NY - December 2, 2003 - CosmoCom, the leading supplier of Contact Center On-Demand™ platforms to network service providers, today announced the launch of its CosmoVantage Market Success Program. The program is designed to guide network service providers through the process of deploying a successful contact center on-demand service.

As the Contact Center On-Demand business model gains momentum, network service providers are welcoming the help and support CosmoCom can offer in the area of marketing. Promoted with the tagline "Create More Demand for Your Contact Center On-Demand," the CosmoVantage program is the first of its kind in the hosted contact center industry.

"As the only specialist in Contact Center On-Demand platforms, we decided to complement our technology leadership with a first-class market development program," said Ari Sonesh, Chairman and CEO for CosmoCom. "More than any of our competitors, whose primary focus remains on premise-based systems, our success depends on the success of our network service provider customers."

CosmoVantage covers all facets of rolling out an on-demand contact center service, including the business case, the end user ROI models, market segmentation, and the marketing mix (i.e., product packaging, pricing, promotion and place/distribution), presented in an individual, interactive and customized forum. CosmoVantage is available now to all current and future CosmoCom network service provider customers worldwide.

For more information on how you can put the CosmoVantage program to work for you, click here. 

BEZEQ DEPLOYS NETWORK-HOSTED CONTACT CENTER 
TECHNOLOGY FROM COSMOCOM

Services Allow Companies to Web-Enable Legacy Call Centers

MELVILLE, NY – December 8, 2003 – CosmoCom announced today that Bezeq, the leading network operator in Israel, is now offering network-hosted services based on CosmoCom technology.  These services web-enable the call center operations of Bezeq’s customers without changing their existing technology.  The project was initiated by Surf and Call, which was acquired by CosmoCom in October.

Bezeq uses the CosmoCom platform as the foundation for two services: ClickTalk, which enables web users to establish a voice call from their PCs to the company’s existing call center; and ClickBack, which provides for an immediate or scheduled callback from the call center to the web user’s phone.  Implementation can be immediate, since, in both cases, these web-originated calls appear to the call center as ordinary telephone calls.

“Many of our call center clients recognize the need to add person-to-person interaction to their web presence,” said Irit Rotshtein, voice over IP product manager for Bezeq, “but they aren’t sure where to begin.  With ClickTalk and ClickBack, we’re offering them a quick and easy way to link their web site to their call center at a very reasonable cost.  These services generate additional toll-free 800 traffic for us, so it’s a real win-win proposition.”

“More and more telcos are beginning to offer a full suite of Contact Center On-Demand services,” said Ari Sonesh, Chairman and CEO for CosmoCom.  “We believe that applications like Bezeq’s ClickTalk and ClickBack will become an important part of this suite, and will better position network service providers to penetrate the installed base of legacy call centers.  We are pleased and proud to be enabling these innovative services from Bezeq with our technology.”

COSMOCOM SELECTED BY ADNOC DISTRIBUTION

System Implemented by CosmoCom Partner InterTec

MELVILLE, NY – November 17, 2003 – CosmoCom announced today that its CosmoCall Universe™ customer interaction management system has been selected by ADNOC Distribution, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. The agreement was inked by CosmoCom’s Dubai-based systems integration partner for the region, InterTec Systems LLC. CosmoCom’s relationship with InterTec gives CosmoCom access to markets throughout the Middle East. The all-IP multimedia solution will enhance ADNOC’s ability to provide state-of-the-art customer service. All communications, including telephone calls, web chats, e-mail and fax messages, will be handled by ADNOC agents on a unified queuing and routing basis. In addition, the CosmoCall Universe system will be integrated to ADNOC’s CRM, empowering agents with the information they need to efficiently handle all communication types.

“We wanted to continue to provide the best level of service to our customers,” said Dr. Ali Guidoum of ADNOC. “We expected a substantial increase in non-traditional traffic including e-mail, web and fax and we needed to put a world class solution in place to handle it. The CosmoCom platform not only reduces the total cost of running our operation, but it allows us to better serve our customers.”

To read the full release, click here.
     

INTERNATIONAL IT LEADER REAPS GREAT RETURNS
WITH HOSTED CONTACT CENTER

Global IT Product and Service Provider Boosts Customer Service Levels and Cuts Asian Contact Center Costs More Than 30 Percent With an On-Demand Solution That Supports Local Languages

With 30,000 customer service agents globally, this leading provider of IT products and services wanted to lower staffing costs and enhance customer service levels in Asian countries by relying on a contact center solution that supports interfaces in various local languages. With such an interface, the company would not be forced to hire English-speaking agents--who command higher salaries than those who speak only the local language. In addition, with a local language interface, these agents would be able to quickly deliver support in the customer’s native tongue.

The company met these requirements by implementing a hosted solution from a global telecommunications service provider that is based on CosmoCom’s CosmoCall Universe—the only on-demand IP-based contact center solution that supports the full range of Asian languages required. These include simplified Chinese for mainland China customers, traditional Chinese for Taiwanese customers, Korean, and Japanese. The benefits: staffing costs have been cut by as much as 40 percent, calls are shorter because translation is never required, and customers are more satisfied.

At the same time, because the solution is hosted, the IT company has eliminated all costs and hassles associated with purchasing, implementing, and maintaining their own on-premise platforms. As a result, bottom line operational costs for Asian contact centers have been cut by more than 30 percent. And, because the contact center solution is both hosted and IP-based, the company is now able to leverage centralized corporate resources across the Internet without incurring extensive network infrastructure implementation costs.

Read more CosmoCom success stories...

A MAJOR AIRLINE EASILY UNIFIES ITS DISTRIBUTED CALL CENTERS
WITH CONTACT CENTER ON-DEMAND™

European Airline Seamlessly Integrates Low-Cost, Offshore Agents Into 
Contact Center Infrastructure With No Capital Investment 

The frequent flyer program of a major European airline needed to expand the capacity of its contact center operations but wanted to do so cost-effectively by avoiding capital investment and by keeping staffing expenses as low as possible. A cap, grow, and overflow situation, the company was satisfied with their existing technology in their in-country contact centers, but realized that newer alternatives could offer the cost-benefits they required for their expanding call volumes.

The solution the airline chose is an on-demand IP-based contact center offering from a major global telecommunications provider which enables geographically dispersed agents to have full access to entire rich feature set of the centralized platform from any Web-enabled PC. At the same time, since all functionality is based on this CosmoCall Universe platform, agents can be monitored on an individual basis, regardless of their location. In other words, the platform empowers the airline to create distributed contact centers which appear, to end-users and management alike, as if they are one central resource. Another benefit of this solution to the airline is that since it is a fully hosted application, it can be easily scaled, either up or down, as call volumes change.

Read more CosmoCom success stories...

VIDEO: THE COSMOCOM CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Hear What Customers Are Saying!

With nearly a dozen leading Network Service Provider customers, CosmoCom is the leading provider of Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD) platforms to telcos worldwide. Hear what CosmoCom's NSP customers and their end users have to say about CosmoCall Universe and the hosted contact center model…. CosmoCom also provides technology for OEMs and integrators to build the world’s best premise-based contact center packages. Hear from the BT Contact Central CEO how CosmoCom helped them launch their successful business... And learn how CosmoCom's teleservices outsourcer customers benefit from the latest in customer interaction management solutions. Hear all this and more, first-hand, in the CosmoCom Customer Experience video, now available online.

COSMOCOM ENJOYS STRONG PRESENCE AT INTELCON 2003 IN ECUADOR

CosmoCom was pleased to be able to participate in the recent Intelcon 2003 event in Ecuador, organized by partner and outsourcer, Orbis Telecom. Together with Orbis, CosmoCom demonstrated the CosmoCall Universe all-IP contact center platform to hundreds of attendees representing the growing Ecuadorian call center market. CosmoCom also presented during the conference and round-table portion of the event in addition to exhibiting. The conferences focused on several aspects of call centers such as technology evolution, operations and staffing. 

Intelcon (International Telecommunications Conference) 2003 took place on November 11th and 12th at the Hotel Hilton Colón in Guayaquil.  CosmoCom's booth was sponsored by Centro de Llamadas Nacional (National Call Center), a subsidiary  of Orbis Telecom. For more information on the annual Intelcon event, visit www.intelcon2003.com/html/inter.htm

In above photo, CosmoCom Sales Support Manager, Brian Davidow, is assisted by
Orbis representatives and members of their call center staff at the Intelcon 2003 exhibition.

WHY CONTACT CENTER ON-DEMAND?

Gartner recently predicted that "20% of companies will replace their contact center infrastructure with a managed service."  Sound interesting? 

If you're a Network Service Provider, Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD) is an opportunity you can't afford to miss! CCOD is a great chance to attract profitable new streams of revenue that, for too long, have been the sole province of premise-based vendors of contact center equipment. As on-demand delivery of software-based solutions gains favor, it makes sense for network service providers to offer their contact center customers on-demand solutions. After all, on-demand services are, in essence, network-based services. Who better than NSPs to offer them? And where better than contact centers to begin?

CosmoCom's most popular whitepaper, Why Contact Center On-Demand?, is being downloaded at the unprecedented rate of 300 copies per month! Find out what all the excitement is about, and download your own copy now! The paper summarizes the business case for hosted contact center, from both end-user and service provider perspectives.

For qualified prospects, customers and partners wishing to dive deeper into the emerging world of Contact Center On-Demand, we have a long (unabridged) version of the paper that also includes a detailed quantitative analysis. Ask  your CosmoCom representative or send a request to whitepapers@cosmocom.com.

DID YOU KNOW?

Through 2005, 20 percent of companies will replace their contact center infrastructure with a managed service.
Through 2004, 70 percent of managed contact center proposals will be based on IP technology.
- Gartner, "IP Contact Center Develops as Managed Service in 2004," November 2003

License revenue from on-site contact center infrastructure will decline at an average annual rate of 4.8 percent over the next three years, while subscription revenue for hosted models will hit $2.8 billion by 2006.
-Aberdeen Group

Silver lining to be found among the impacts of the USA national Do Not Call list?
Though the USA national Do Not Call list may cut off more than half of all consumers and 55 percent of the industry's existing customer base, there may be some silver linings. Those individuals that do not add their names to the list - and are therefore still available to telemarketers - were found to have a larger average order size than those that did register for the no-call list. Additionally, those that remain off the list were more likely to be non-customers (98 million, versus the 18 million on the list who were previous purchasers). "Given the strength of the correlation between high expenditure individuals and the likelihood of remaining off the list, the average order size may in fact be almost 40 percent higher."

These results are from the newly released white paper, "How is the 'Do Not Call' Registry Affecting Your Customer Base?" from The Direct Marketing Association. Information may be found at www.the-dma.org. 
Above extracts from "'Grim' Study Charts Changing Telemarketing Environment," Scott Hovanyetz, DMNews

     
Editor-in-Chief: Laura Fader
Graphics & Design: Kevin Simms