SoundBite Communications And Inbusiness Teleservices Partner To Provide A New Call Center Solution For The Energy Industry
SoundBite's Outbound Communications Solution Provides InBusiness With Interactive Voice Messaging Options to Quickly Reach Thousands of Customers for Marketing and Service Applications
SoundBite Communications Inc., providing an innovative approach to customer communications, and InBusiness TeleServices, Inc., a high-quality sales and marketing outsource partner for the utility industry, announced a partnership today to integrate SoundBite's outbound interactive messaging solution with InBusiness' call center operations. The companies will also engage in joint sales and marketing activities to their respective customer bases.
SoundBite's technology allows InBusiness to send thousands of professionally recorded voice messages to their customer base within hours. With SoundBite's advanced interactive features, such as Direct ConnectTM, message recipients can be automatically connected to a live InBusiness customer service representative (CSR) to complete a transaction or to obtain additional information. This capability allows InBusiness CSRs to spend more time fielding high value inbound calls. With SoundBite, InBusiness can now send payment reminders to utility customers, keep residents informed during power outages, and easily schedule maintenance and repair appointments. InBusiness TeleServices currently serves companies such as Agway Energy Products, Constellation NewEnergy and Dominion Retail. SoundBite voice messaging campaigns have been utilized by energy companies such as PECO Energy, an Exelon Company, Nicor and Keyspan.
"SoundBite's technology will save utility companies time and money for a wide variety of marketing and customer service applications. With SoundBite's voice messaging service we can easily and quickly contact a large customer base with important information and when we use the interactive features, we can generate immediate responses," said Barbara Porter, President, InBusiness TeleServices. "This technology will also benefit our call center operation because it allows us to better utilize our resources and to enhance the quality of service that we provide." SoundBite's interactive voice messaging solution also allows InBusiness TeleServices to personalize outbound messages using text-to-speech technology and to verify or capture a person's name, street address and email address using voice recognition and touch tones, allowing InBusiness to greatly enhance the quality and accuracy of customer databases.
"By using SoundBite's technology, our customers are alerted to important issues affecting their accounts such as overdue payments," said Vincent Catania, Director, PECO Energy, an Exelon Company. "An automated voice message is an easy way to remind customers to pay a bill, and it can be more effective too because many people feel uncomfortable when they're asked for money by a live person."
"We are very excited about our partnership with InBusiness TeleServices. They have a longstanding reputation as high quality sales, marketing and service provider for the utility industry," said John McDonough, CEO of SoundBite Communications Inc. "SoundBite lends itself well to the energy industry where large numbers of customers need to be contacted in a short period of time with important information. Our technology is able to solve a variety of problems that customer service representatives deal with daily, and our ability to scale the technology from basic notifications to fully interactive messaging sets us apart from other voice messaging companies."