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February 24, 2004
Aliant Selects Customer Contact Solution from Nortel Networks
New IP Functionality Expected to Help Improve Customer Service
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Aliant, Canada’s third largest incumbent telecommunications company, has selected IP (Internet Protocol) customer contact solutions from Nortel Networks* [NYSE/TSX: NT] to optimize its current contact center infrastructure, enabling it to better engage its two million customers while fielding 10 million calls each year.
Nortel Networks IP contact center solutions will assist Aliant in delivering a consistently positive service experience across products and customer touch points by providing increased flexibility, ease of management, improved call routing and enhanced reporting. By giving Aliant a choice of migration paths to IP convergence, Nortel Networks is assisting the company in transforming its customer service to meet the needs of its customers.
“After going through an extensive RFP process that included stringent requirements, we found Nortel Networks Symposium* Contact Center solution would exceed our expectations,” said Wendy Paquette, senior vice president, Customer Service, Aliant. “We needed a solution that could provide skill-based routing, e-mail, chat and a host of collaboration applications.”
As part of Aliant’s IP contact center network, Nortel Networks will bridge IP and TDM-based telephony networks and give contact center agents remote office capabilities to more efficiently respond to customer questions no matter where the agent is located.
“Aliant turned to Nortel Networks for a solution that could provide the functionality they needed without requiring a forklift upgrade of their network,” said Roxann Swanson, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Communication Applications, Nortel Networks. “As part of our ‘One network. A world of choice.’ enterprise technology vision, we are providing customers like Aliant with advanced solutions to better engage their customers.”
A critical component of Nortel Networks IP customer contact portfolio is a solid migration plan that enables companies to leverage the benefits of IP telephony without having to overhaul or purchase completely new communications infrastructure. Customers can use an IP enabled or a fully converged solution to leverage the power and performance of convergence.
Aliant has also selected Nortel Networks Succession* 3.0 to take advantage of IP Telephony technology. Succession 3.0 brings new benefits for customers deploying Nortel Networks IP contact center solutions, including:
- Increased scalability – Up to 2,000 agents per server can be supported, with the ability to network up to 30 servers for large enterprise contact center environments.
- Investment protection and flexibility – No forklift upgrade is required of a customer looking to migrate from its TDM infrastructure to IP, since an enterprise can gradually add IP phones while phasing out digital handsets.
- Extending the contact center to remote workers – With Succession 3.0, contact centers can leverage the cost and expertise of a distributed workforce by extending contact center applications to employees and managers anywhere without requiring new call center servers.
- Call center agents are able to have valuable information delivered to them with a ‘dashboard’ view of data on their IP phone screens.
Nortel Networks award-winning Symposium Call Center Server and Symposium Express Call Center enable businesses to take advantage of powerful capabilities like skill-based routing, comprehensive management and reporting, and real-time displays to enhance the customer experience and improve loyalty. Nortel Networks IP contact center solutions help enterprises handle customer needs more efficiently and effectively, resulting in stronger, more profitable relationships.
From its home base in Atlantic Canada, Aliant delivers a wide variety of innovative and traditional communications services, including local and long-distance telephony, wireless, Internet, e-commerce, interactive multimedia, data and managed network services, to more than two million consumers and over 80,000 enterprises. Aliant complements its industry-leading telecommunications business with strengths in information technology solutions and knowledge-services applications. The company's 9,000 employees build on Aliant's 100-plus year history by collaborating to deliver the highest quality of customer service, choice and convenience. Aliant is a TSX 100 company with a market capitalization of more than $4 billion. More information about Aliant [TSX:AIT] may be found by visiting www.aliant.ca.**
Nortel Networks is an industry leader and innovator focused on transforming how the world communicates and exchanges information. The Company is supplying its service provider and enterprise customers with communications technology and infrastructure to enable value-added IP data, voice and multimedia services spanning Wireless Networks, Wireline Networks, Enterprise Networks, and Optical Networks. As a global company, Nortel Networks does business in more than 150 countries. More information about Nortel Networks can be found on the Web at www.nortelnetworks.com.
Certain information included in this press release is forward-looking and is subject to important risks and uncertainties. The results or events predicted in these statements may differ materially from actual results or events. Factors which could cause results or events to differ from current expectations include, among other things: the sufficiency of our restructuring activities, including the potential for higher actual costs to be incurred in connection with restructuring actions compared to the estimated costs of such actions; continued reductions in spending by our customers; fluctuations in operating results and general industry, economic and market conditions and growth rates; the communication by our auditors of the existence of material weaknesses in internal control; the ability to recruit and retain qualified employees; fluctuations in cash flow, the level of outstanding debt and our current debt ratings; the ability to meet the financial covenant in our credit facilities; the use of cash collateral to support our normal course business activities; the dependence on our subsidiaries for funding; the impact of our defined benefit plans and our deferred tax assets on our results of operations, cash flows and compliance with our financial covenant; the dependence on new product development and our ability to predict market demand for particular products; the ability to integrate the operations and technologies of acquired businesses in an effective manner; the impact of rapid technological and market change; the impact of price and product competition; barriers to international growth and global economic conditions, particularly in emerging markets and including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations; the impact of rationalization in the telecommunications industry; changes in regulation of the Internet; the impact of the credit risks of our customers and the impact of customer financing and commitments; stock market volatility generally and as a result of acceleration of the settlement date or early settlement of our purchase contracts; risks associated with a consolidation of our common shares; the impact of supply and outsourcing contracts that contain delivery and installation provisions, which, if not met, could result in the payment of substantial penalties or liquidated damages; the future success of our strategic alliances; and the adverse resolution of litigation, intellectual property disputes and similar matters. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see the most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filed by Nortel Networks with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel Networks disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
*Nortel Networks, the Nortel Networks logo, the Globemark, Business Without Boundaries, Symposium and Succession are trademarks of Nortel Networks.
**This is a 3rd party link as described in our Web linking practices.
Contact for Press and Analysts:
Dana Hughens
Nortel Networks
(615) 432-4636
dhughens@nortel.com
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