First End-to-End Workforce Optimisation Solution

Witness Systems Brings Industry’s First End-to-End Workforce Optimisation Solution to New Zealand Businesses

– Outlines course for driving increased business value and customer success –

–Pre-packages contact centre Quality Monitoring and Workforce Management solutions with Performance Management and Actionable Learning capabilities –

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (Wednesday 7 September, 2005) – Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS), a leading global provider of workforce optimisation software and services, has launched the contact centre industry’s first end-to-end solution for optimising workforce performance in New Zealand. The solution breaks new ground for companies striving to manage their personnel effectively, as well as capitalise on the valuable information captured through customer interactions, by leveraging the pre-packaged software and services from Witness Systems.

The new integrated solution has been developed following Witness Systems’ acquisition of Blue Pumpkin Software Inc. earlier this year. Witness Systems’solutions are available in New Zealand through its partners TelstraClear and Zeacom.

"The local market has been seeking a tightly-woven contact centre solution that addresses key management challenges,” said Dermot McCutcheon, managing director for Witness Systems in New Zealand. “The combination of the workforces, products, customers and distribution channels of Witness Systems and Blue Pumpkin has created a global leader with the resources and technology innovation to be the first to market with a single platform for a complete workforce optimisation solution. Now our local customers can optimise their people, processes and technology along the complete contact centre workforce continuum."

Four functional areas of workforce optimisation

The comprehensive workforce optimisation solutions from Witness Systems feature four functional areas that will be engineered to work optimally together: quality monitoring/contact centre recording, workforce management, performance management and e-learning.

While certain capabilities can be deployed independently, Witness Systems has combined functions to create pre-packaged solutions to deliver increased business value and drive customer success. By fusing together actionable learning and performance management with the workforce optimisation anchors of quality monitoring and workforce management, Witness Systems is redefining two of the contact centre industry’s most promising segments and providing customers with an entry point to a complete workforce optimisation solution.

“There is no question that by improving workforce performance and capturing customer intelligence, especially in the contact centre, organisations have the greatest opportunity to leverage technology for performance improvement, customer satisfaction and competitive advantage,” said Mr McCutcheon. “Building on our base of industry leadership and experience, Witness Systems and our partners are squarely focused on workforce optimisation and are committed to delivering tangible business outcomes for our customers. We are engineering the components customers want and expect from a single provider to work together seamlessly.”

Business benefits

Organisations can leverage the company’s technology solutions and services to capture customer intelligence, optimise the customer experience, increase customer satisfaction, improve customer retention, achieve customer loyalty and seize revenue growth opportunities. Witness Systems has outlined several trends that underscore how focusing on optimising workforce performance will enable companies to take advantage of changing global business conditions, including the move from Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) infrastructures, the shift toward remote agents and virtual contact centre models, changes in hiring and training practices, and the move to workforce optimisation in the contact centre and enterprise.

Industry experts are concluding that the workforce optimisation market is maturing and that customers are demanding more integrated and robust software and services. Now, more than ever, quality monitoring and workforce management are the focal points of successful contact centres, as well as thriving enterprises. As a result, capturing the customer experience and analysing its effectiveness, as well as managing to excellence through forecasting and scheduling, is critical.

As companies evolve and mature, whether they are global organisations or small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Witness Systems has the foundation-level and strategic offerings to help them progress through the workforce optimisation continuum to extend business value. For example, the company’s pre-packaged solutions at the foundation level are comprised of functionality to help reduce risk and optimise agent performance, and are designed to help organisations:

- Decrease average handle time

- Improve quality scores

- Drive down average speed to answer

- Manage agent occupancy

- Enhance customer service levels

The next level of pre-packaged solutions focuses on further optimising contact centre performance and is designed to:

- Boost first call resolution

- Increase up-selling and cross-selling

- Improve contact centre customer satisfaction

Additional functionality is available for organisations that work to differentiate themselves through customer service and/or strive to create seamless customer service across the enterprise. These functions help companies:

- Perform root cause analysis

- Grow overall customer satisfaction

- Increase customer loyalty

Regardless of an organisation or contact centre’s size and requirements, Witness Systems has an offering designed to meet its specific needs today, as well as a path for growth as the company advances its customer service objectives.

Workforce Optimisation Integration and Architecture

Building upon the company’s flagship platforms for recording – the industry’s first software for monitoring and evaluating customer sales/services representatives’ (CSR) telephone interactions with customers, as well as their corresponding computer desktop activities – and workforce management – the industry’s first multimedia scheduling and 100 per cent adherence management offering – Witness Systems’ workforce optimisation solution offers robust functionality, including recording in IP telephony and back office-environments.
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The company’s combined workforce optimisation solution in-process focuses on the deep integration between functions, helping companies realise real business value by:

- Creating a pre-defined workforce optimisation scorecard that’s auto-populated with workforce management statistics, quality scores and CTI information. Separately, both Witness Systems and Blue Pumpkin offered the market’s first and most robust enterprise reporting scorecard functionality for their segments. Together, the company offers the first and only pre-defined workforce optimisation scorecard available today.

- Drilling to recorded interactions during scorecard analysis and investigation, allowing users to review customer contacts and gain a high-level or detailed view of how customer service unfolds and potential areas for improvement.

- Driving schedule changes from e-learning requests and allowing agents to navigate to training from their workforce optimisation desktops.

- Forming a central agent database, defined as a single source of record for moves, adds and changes in the workforce optimisation solution set.

- Leveraging quality evaluation scores for more accurate scheduling.

Witness Systems’ solution is evolving to a single graphical user interface (GUI), single agent database, single system administration and single security model. With this structure, customers will benefit from easier installation and implementation, reduced learning curves and training expenses, and lower maintenance and software expenses – all of which translate into lower cost of ownership and a faster return on investment.

Couple that with solutions and services that draw on a structured upgrade path and single support organisation, and users gain significant advantages from Witness Systems’ tightly-woven workforce optimisation solution.

Redefining Quality Monitoring and Workforce Management

Witness Systems is redefining stand-alone workforce management software by pre-packaging compelling performance analysis and actionable learning capabilities that companies can leverage to:

- Identify trends, recognise top performers and quickly focus on key areas in need of improvement

- Improve agent competence in product knowledge, call handling and system navigation

The company is similarly transforming the quality monitoring market by bundling scorecards and e-learning software so organisations can:

- Compare actual performance with goals using pre-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) displayed in role-appropriate scorecards

- Address skill deficiencies with e-learning based on actual recorded customer interactions

Pricing and Availability

The new pre-packaged workforce optimisation solutions are available today. Because contact centres have different needs, Witness Systems offers packaged solutions that provide different levels of functionality.

About Witness Systems

Witness Systems (NASDAQ: WITS) is a leading global provider of workforce optimisation software and services. The company's solutions – which play a strategic role in the customer interaction centers of Global 2000 and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide – also are deployed in IP telephony and back- office environments, and throughout the extended enterprise, including branch offices. Witness Systems’software is comprised of quality monitoring, compliance, high-volume and IP telephony recording solutions, as well as workforce management, actionable learning and performance management applications. The company’s solutions enable organisations to optimise their people, processes and technology throughout the enterprise. Witness Systems’ customers benefit from an integrated business consulting, implementation and training methodology that supports a rapid deployment, enabling them to drive revenue, reduce operational costs, and achieve greater customer retention and loyalty. For additional information about Witness Systems, visit www.witness.com.

ENDS

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