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Press Release
FaceTime Communications and Ask Jeeves Partner to Provide Instant Messaging
Based Customer Service for Enterprise Business Customers
FaceTime Communications enters into strategic partnership with Ask Jeeves to
offer combination of self-service and live assistance capabilities to its
enterprise customers
FOSTER CITY, Calif. April 18, 2001 -- FaceTime Communications, the premier
provider of instant messaging for businesses, and Ask Jeeves, Inc.(R)
(Nasdaq:ASKJ), a leading provider of natural language navigation and business
intelligence systems, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver
instant messaging-based customer service to its enterprise users. The result
will be a combination of self-service and live-assistance capabilities for
large enterprise customer care organizations.
The partnership aligns FaceTime's strength in resolving time-sensitive business
problems with instant messaging technology, and Ask Jeeves' solid reputation
for delivering powerful, natural language and popularity-based search
technology. Companies that choose the combined offering from Ask Jeeves and
FaceTime will benefit from an advanced self-service/live-service solution that
large enterprises both need and require.
"Ask Jeeves is partnering with FaceTime because we believe our corporate
customer base of companies such as Dell, Ford, Nike and Nextel, may in the
future want to complement the self-service and customer intelligence
capabilities we offer with the live assistance that FaceTime provides," said
Claudio Pinkus, president of Ask Jeeves Business Solutions. "Both Ask Jeeves
and FaceTime have strong reputations for providing customers with functional,
scalable and reliable technology. This partnership enables us to leverage each
others' strengths and provide complementary services to companies focused on
the customer experience."
FaceTime's instant messaging solutions will work with Ask Jeeves self-service
question answering systems to escalate customers to live, real-person
assistance when they need it. By offering users live help at critical moments
in the e-commerce and e-support cycles, the combined technologies will help
corporations improve look-to-book ratios, reduce support costs and improve
customer loyalty.
"This new partnership is ideal for both companies. Ask Jeeves is the leader in
enterprise knowledge management solutions, which FaceTime's customer base can
easily add to their business. And when time sensitivity in problem resolution
is critical to Ask Jeeves' customers, FaceTime's instant messaging technology
provides immediate escalation management to the right human at the right time,"
said Glen Vondrick, CEO of FaceTime Communications. "In this marketplace, the
combination of offerings from companies such as ours provides customers with
true best-of-breed technology and exceptional business value."
Ask Jeeves and FaceTime will work closely together to provide a seamless
transition for Ask Jeeves' corporate customers from Jeeves Live, which the
company has discontinued, to FaceTime's instant messaging technology. Ask
Jeeves' partnership with FaceTime is part of its strategy to deliver best of
breed natural language navigation and business intelligence systems while
continuing to offer corporations customer escalation technologies.
Instant messaging is the fastest growing communications channel in history.
According to IDC, by 2004, over 400M clients will be using instant messaging to
generate 2 trillion instant messages between consumers and businesses. Global
2000 contact center CRM budgets are predicted to be over $12 billion. In
addition, Forrester Research estimates that the average cost of a phone call to
a contact center costs a business approximately $33 per call, whereas an
instant messaging session costs about $7.33 per session. Instant messaging
creates tremendous opportunities for Global 2000 businesses, and FaceTime is
positioned to help their partners and customers capitalize on this opportunity.
About FaceTime Communications
Founded in 1998, FaceTime Communications is the leading provider of security solutions for the management and
control of greynet applications such as adware/spyware, instant messaging, webmail, P2P file sharing, web
conferencing and instant voice. FaceTime delivers the industry's first IMPact Index, which assesses "point-in-time"
risks posed by viruses, worms and other malware propagating through greynet applications. FaceTime's award-winning
solutions are used by over 600 customers, among them seven of the eight largest U.S. financial institutions.
FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships with all leading public and private IM network providers, including
AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, IBM, Bloomberg, Jabber and Reuters.
FaceTime is headquartered in Foster City, California. For more information visit http://www.facetime.com or call 888-349-FACE.
About Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves is a leading provider of intuitive, intelligent question answering
technologies and services. Ask Jeeves' solutions enable companies to convert
online shoppers to buyers, reduce support costs, understand customer
preferences and improve customer retention. Ask Jeeves also syndicates its
solutions to portals, infomediaries, and content and destination sites to help
companies increase e-commerce and advertising revenue. Ask Jeeves deploys its
solutions on Ask Jeeves at Ask.com, Ask Jeeves for Kids at AJKids.com and
DirectHit.com, to help companies target and acquire qualified prospects online
and to provide consumers with real-time access to information, products and
services. For more information, visit http://www.Ask.com
or call 510-985-7400.
PR Contact:
Emily Chamberlin
650-762-2945
echamberlin@ar-edelman.com
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