FUTURECALL EXPANDS COSMOCOM-BASED CONTACT CENTER

Next Generation Technology Allows Outsourcer to Comply with New FTC Regulations

MELVILLE, NY – July 28, 2003 – CosmoCom announced today that it has implemented a major expansion order from FutureCall. The expansion will allow FutureCall to comply with new Federal Trade Commission regulations, and includes hundreds of additional agent positions, as well as new functionality for the existing seats. FutureCall is now set to become the largest installation to date of CosmoCom’s predictive dialing package, CosmoDialer, which enables outbound operators to comply with the strict new FTC regulations limiting abandoned calls while maintaining high agent productivity. 

FutureCall operates as a multi-location virtual contact center using the all-IP CosmoCall Universe platform, which allows agents to be located anywhere. With CosmoCall Universe, FutureCall is able to handle both traditional telephone and emerging web and email contact types for the customers they serve, in one unified system. The platform’s multi-CRM feature lets FutureCall agents serve multiple clients with the relevant CRM application for each client automatically invoked by the incoming call.

"Teleservices outsourcing is no longer just about answering phone calls," said Brent J. Welch, President and CEO for FutureCall. "We not only need to deal with all the new contact types, but also have to handle complex outbound campaigns. And we need to do it all with a much higher level of integration into our clients’ back-end systems. CosmoCom’s technology has really given us an edge on our competition here. In addition, the ability to locate agents anywhere gives us more flexibility and efficiency in staffing."

"FutureCall’s decision to upgrade and expand their CosmoCall Universe system demonstrates the important role of IP technology in the contact center industry," said Ari Sonesh, CEO for CosmoCom. "Some of the things FutureCall is doing simply cannot be done with traditional technology. We appreciate their leadership in teleservices outsourcing, and we are pleased and proud to be a part of their technology base."

CosmoDialer also has IP-based Answering Machine Detection. Get details below.

And read more about how Teleservices Outsourcers benefit from CosmoCall Universe.

COSMOCOM INTRODUCES IP-BASED LIVE CALL DETECTION 

Patent Pending Technology Adds Answering Machine Detection to FTC-Compliant CosmoDialer

MELVILLE, NY – August 11, 2003 – CosmoCom, the leading provider of IP-based contact center solutions, today announced the introduction of its patent pending Live Call Detection capability. The feature is used to automatically differentiate between calls that are answered by a live person and those answered by a machine or voicemail, connecting only the former to an outbound agent.

Live Call Detection is a component of CosmoDialer, CosmoCom's predictive outbound dialing package that delivers high agent productivity, while enabling outbound operators to comply with strict new FTC regulations limiting abandoned calls. The solution, the first that works entirely in the IP domain, is gateway-independent, allowing CosmoCom customers to deploy the solution with the off-the-shelf voice over IP gateway or VoIP service of their choice.

With IP-based Live Call Detection, field results have shown that answering machines can be recognized correctly more than 90% of the time. Legacy detection techniques often achieve only 70% accuracy.

"The new FTC regulations are changing the outbound teleservices business in fundamental ways," said Ari Sonesh. "IP solutions are providing outbound operators with the flexibility they need to rapidly adjust to the changing landscape they face. Now that Live Call Detection is available with IP-based predictive dialers, they have more reason than ever to make the switch from legacy technology."

NET2S LAUNCHES COSMOCOM-BASED CONTACT CENTER SOLUTION

Partnership Extends Reach of All-IP Contact Center in France

MELVILLE, NY and PARIS, France – July 15, 2003 – CosmoCom and NET2S announced today that NET2S has launched an all-IP contact center solution, based on CosmoCom’s flagship product, CosmoCall Universe™. NET2S Group is an internationally recognized consulting firm that enables large corporations to leverage the advantages of Enterprise Connectivity to their fullest. NET2S will initially offer the solution to financial, telecom and media companies in France, with plans to expand the offer to other European markets and North America in the near term.

CosmoCall Universe is built on open, next generation technologies that empower NET2S to deliver custom contact solutions covering both traditional and emerging contact channels, including phone, e-mail, web chat, web voice, SMS and video, with unmatched flexibility and speed. The all-software, standards-based design of CosmoCall Universe will allow NET2S to deliver true CIRM (customer interaction AND relationship management) solutions that tightly integrate the functions of CIM (customer interaction management) with those of CRM (customer relationship management).

"The CosmoCom solution brings disparate systems and business processes together in one platform," said Benjamin Caller, Partners and Marketing Director for NET2S Group. "This allows us to deliver real value to our clients, reducing the cost and complexity while increasing the ROI of their contact center infrastructure."

To read the full release, visit www.cosmocom.com/pressreleases/PressReleases2003/pr07152003.htm 
  

HOW DO TELESERVICES OUTSOURCERS BENEFIT FROM COSMOCALL UNIVERSE?

Teleservices Outsourcers Are Facing Many Challenges:

• Your old outbound-only Predictive Dialers are increasingly difficult to work with, expensive to support, and non-compliant with the FTC's new abandoned call regulations. Isn't there a better and truly blended inbound/outbound solution?

• You are passing up business opportunities for insourcing and co-sourcing because your ACD infrastructure does not cost effectively support multi-location operation, or multi-tenant operation with customer self-administration.

• You have to purchase ACD infrastructure for your peak usage. With your campaign-oriented business, you need a way to pay only for your actual usage.

• You need an open development platform, not an end user technology. But that doesn't mean you can afford to be reinventing the wheel every day.

• You are spending a lot on telecommunications services and routing systems designed to load-balance and transfer traffic among different locations.

• You would prefer to create smaller regional centers. Home Agents could reduce your staffing costs. But your current technology base makes it hard to manage these options efficiently and cost effectively.

• Your customers want new services, such as managing contacts initiated via Internet and e-mail channels.

• At the same time, you need to reduce operating cost and complexity, not increase it by integrating diverse systems with brittle CTI interfaces and creating many different administrative interfaces and overlapping databases.

The Future of Contact Center Technology--Today.
Go beyond the limits of legacy technologies and create optimum customer care environments with CosmoCall Universe, a next generation contact center platform designed to meet service providers' needs for high performance, high availability, and high capacity.

For more information on how CosmoCom's technology can benefit you, visit www.cosmocom.com/Solutions/Outsourcers.htm

NEW TRAINING TARGETED AT SUPPORT

On September 15th, CosmoCom's training department will debut 4 NEW technical training courses. These new courses will certify partners and customers to be self sufficient in providing Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support for the CosmoCall Universe product, allowing them to maintain and upgrade their systems without costly and time consuming remote maintenance or on-site visits by CosmoCom's professional services team of support engineers. New course offerings are as follows:

CCU Tier 1 Support - a five (5) day course  CCU Tier 2 Support - a five (5) day course  CCU Customization - a two (2) day course CCU Deployment - a three (3) day course
CosmoCom's state of the art training room

The new course descriptions, prerequisites, and schedule through December are posted at Services, Technical Training. CosmoCom can offer these or SPECIAL request training courses at our Melville, NY USA training center or another office on an as needed basis. Contact your account representative for more information.

ShopLive, "the next best thing to being there," has signed a large multi-year agreement with BT Global Services, one of CosmoCom's premier network service provider partners. BT will provide the advanced contact center on-demand service, which it calls BT Multimedia Contact Centre, that ShopLive will use to change the way people shop, the way retailers sell, and the future of the Internet itself. BT's MCC service is based on CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe platform, hosted in BT's global network.

"CosmoCom and BT are key technology enablers of our vision of personalizing the Internet shopping experience," said Anthony Pugliese III, ShopLive's founder and president. "CosmoCom's multimedia, Internet-enabled ACD can literally route voice and video calls from anywhere to anywhere. BT's MCC service offer, based on CosmoCom's platform, gives us the global reach we need for these advanced capabilities with reasonable, usage-based pricing and essentially no capital investment on our part. We've been planning and preparing ShopLive for years now, but our ability to obtain this technology, on such favorable terms, is the breakthrough that we've been looking for."

"BT's global MCC platform is definitely the perfect match for ShopLive," said Frank Shaffer, Director, Managed Voice Services for BT Global Services. "BT's network and MCC platform are ready for the dramatic growth we expect to see in ShopLive and in other applications of this exciting technology."

For more information on BT's MCC on-demand service, visit www.cosmocom.com/BTGlobalServices/index.htm  

For the many readers who asked about EVP Steve Kowarsky's Carnegie Hall concert, the "Luiz Simas Live in New York City," CD containing all the music from the event, is now available for purchase at www.luizsimas.com/pages/orders.html. It will also be available any day now on CDBaby.com; just search for Luiz Simas.

Pictured: Luiz Simas at the piano with Steve Kowarsky front and center. 
Also, from left to right, Mauro Refosco (percussion) and Barbara Blonska (flute).

NEW MEMBERS OF THE COSMOCOM FAMILY

CosmoCom would like to extend a warm welcome to our new employees worldwide:

Headquarters
Eileen Barrios-Pryor, Staff Accountant
Sanjiv Deshpande, Sr. Software Developer
Yoo Chan Jeon, Sr. Software Developer

United Kingdom
Ken Hughes, Director, Technical Services

COSMOCOM IN THE NEWS

CosmoCom is rated the leading visionary in Gartner's recent EMEA Contact Center Infrastructure Magic Quadrant, published in July 2003.
For a copy, please visit www.gartner.com

DID YOU KNOW?

With technology maturing, customers increasing and market factors maturing to more traditional demand economics, "enough of the ingredients are in place now globally for VoP (Voice-over-Packet) finally to have its breakthrough year."
-Frost & Sullivan, 2003 World VoP Equipment Market Update, June 2003

Spending on voice technology -- including consultancy and systems integration -- will increase rapidly to $20 billion in 2005 and to $40 billion in 2007.
-SRI Consulting Business Intelligence

83% of large U.S. businesses are using or testing IP telephony at an average cost of $636,000.
-Nemertes, Implementing IP Telephony

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS

TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH THE JARGON? READ THESE!

Selecting a Teleservices Partner. The Anton Press. Published March 2002.

The Dialamerica Teleservices Handbook: A Guide to Successful Inbound and Outbound Telemarketing. 
McGraw-Hill. Published October 2000.

Call Center Operations: Profiting from Teleservices. McGraw-Hill. Published April 2000.

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