Press Release

Amica Insurance Selects FaceTime Communications to Provide Instant Messaging-Based Customer Service in Enterprise

FaceTime chosen by Amica for real-time call center communications and customer interaction

FOSTER CITY, CA - June 25, 2001 -- Amica Mutual Insurance Company, the nation's oldest mutual insurer of automobiles, has chosen FaceTime Communications, the premier provider of instant messaging for businesses, to provide real-time communications and Web inbound IM-routing capabilities for its 100 seat corporate office Service Center. The result will be a suite of applications that improve on-line customer satisfaction through innovative instant messaging technology, making Amica the customer service leader in the insurance industry.

"We conducted a lengthy evaluation of many vendors in the customer service technology sector," said Margaret Munroe, Amica's Assistant Vice President of Corporate Communications. "FaceTime's interface to the AOL and MSN networks, their vision of IM within the call center, as well as their flexibility to integrate chat, E-mail, IM, and other features, such as Web-based call-back, were the key reasons that FaceTime's instant messaging technology appealed to us. In addition, FaceTime's success with customers like Bank One and Compaq solidified our confidence in FaceTime's ability to offer our customers another important means of contact."

Amica will utilize FaceTime's Instant Message Director to help obtain new business in its auto insurance product line, and for some claim reporting. In order to achieve this, Amica will use the FaceTime public IM gateway service under the BizBuddy name, AskAmica, which will give their customers the flexibility to contact Amica's call center using their familiar AOL instant messenger. The company will combine this with FaceTime's Web-based callback feature, which allows Amica's agents and customers to escalate an instant messaging session to voice. Server scalability, IM technology, and the flexibility of having the option to bring the solution in-house to Amica at a later date were all important components for choosing the FaceTime Instant Message Director.

"The decision by Amica Insurance to select FaceTime is an important validation of our vision of the importance of Instant Messaging networks to extend time-sensitive communication throughout the enterprise," said Glen Vondrick, President and CEO of FaceTime. "Amica's vision that Web-based chat must also extend connectivity with the public Instant Messaging networks to reach beyond the call center further demonstrates that IM is an integral part of time-sensitive, critical customer communications across many different industries."

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. Forrester Research states that by 2002, consumers will get answers to customer service queries by using instant messaging tools from the likes of AOL and Microsoft to link to agents and companies' knowledge bases. This channel will rapidly displace browser-based customer service chat systems. In addition, Forrester 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 Amica
Amica Mutual Insurance Company is the nation's oldest mutual insurer of automobiles, and was founded in 1907. The company, with corporate headquarters in Lincoln, Rhode Island, is a national writer of automobile, homeowners, marine, and personal excess liability insurance. Life coverage is available through Amica Life Insurance Company, a wholly owned subsidiary. Amica employs more than 3,400 people in 42 offices across the country.

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.

PR Contact:

Emily Chamberlin
650-762-2945
echamberlin@ar-edelman.com