Oncontact Software Receives Customer Inter@ction Solutions

Oncontact Software Honored For Fifth Consecutive Year

CEDARBURG, WIS (May 10, 2004) – Oncontact Software Corporation, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for mid-market companies, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC(TM))’s Customer Inter@ction Solutions® magazine (www.cismag.com) has named Oncontact Software as a recipient of the CRM Excellence Award for 2004. Customer Inter@ction Solutions® has been the premier publication in the CRM, call center and teleservices industries since 1982.

The CRM Excellence Award honors Oncontact Software as a CRM software leader that truly understands first-rate customer service and what it ultimately means to the bottom line. Oncontact Software was chosen for the CRM Excellence Award for the outstanding quality of its CRM software suite and the success that it has brought to Oncontact Software customers.

Oncontact Software demonstrated that success by showing Customer Inter@ction Solutions editors how it improved business for its client, The Bell Group. The Bell Group is primarily a business-to-business manufacturer and distributor to the jewelry industry. The company also has a business division that services the high-tech ceramics industry. The Bell Group has a wide range of products, varying from 1mm gemstones to 1,000-lb. casting machines. The company outfits jewelry retailers and manufacturers domestically and around the world with jewelry materials and supplies.

The Bell Group’s business is comprised of thousands of details, which calls for a high degree of precision in developing and executing its business practices. The company manufactures and distributes more than 23,000 products. Those products are detailed in four separate catalogs, all branded Rio Grande, which are distributed to a combined audience of over 225,000.

The Bell Group’s vision called for integrating the entire scope of The Bell Group’s customer-facing technology – including its CRM, accounting, warehousing, field service, manufacturing and shipping systems – to achieve maximum efficiency in its business processes. The integration would, in turn, ensure customers that each experience with The Bell Group would be a pleasant one. One that would make them want to be Bell Group customers for years to come.

The Bell Group uses CMS to follow up on sales calls, track customer activity, share information in real time, monitor marketing programs and gauge customer needs in order to serve them better. Team members no longer have to struggle to remember every business process because CMS provides automated templates for them to follow. CMS also generates reminders for follow-up activities, allowing users to record future tasks in CMS then rely on the system to remind them at a later date.

The company has witnessed increased efficiency throughout many departments. Benefits include:

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40% decrease in training time for new employees
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Streamlined sales team. Oncontact has enabled us to create collaborations between diverse sales groups, adding operating efficiencies that were previously unobtainable.
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Oncontact has helped The Bell Group maintain pre-implementation talk times (4 mins 55 secs average) while collecting approximately 20% more information per call – a big boon for marketing and customer service efforts, and a significant increase in throughput.
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An 11-29% reduction in list management and segmentation costs .
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Oncontact has helped reduce response times for new customer catalog requests and First Time Buyer Welcome Packets from 4 days to 24 hours, which increased response rates by 34% for catalog requesters and decreased the time between 1st and 2nd order by 60% for First Time Buyers.

“We are very pleased with the success companies like The Bell Group have achieved with the Oncontact CRM system in supporting their CRM strategies over the years,” said Jon Zimmerman, president of Oncontact Software. “For the fifth consecutive year we are extremely honored that Customer Inter@action Solutions magazine has recognized the achievements that Oncontact Software has made with customers such as The Bell Group.”

“Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine implemented the CRM Excellence Awards as a way of commending the companies that have proven to be true CRM partners to their customers and clients. Oncontact Software has demonstrated to the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions that their products and services have substantially improved the processes of their clients’ businesses by streamlining and facilitating the flow of information needed for companies to retain their most precious asset…their customers,” said Nadji Tehrani, founder and chairman of TMC, publishers of Customer Inter@ction Solutions.

The CRM Excellence Award winners for 2004 will be published in the May and June issues of Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine.

Source: Oncontact Software

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