Survey Reveals Significant Gap in Most Companies' Approach to Serving Customers (email this article)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 2005--ATG (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies) (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG), the software provider behind the most consistent and relevant marketing, commerce, and customer service experiences, today announced the results of a survey the company conducted among more than 50 members of its blue-chip customer base. The survey revealed that more than 75% of the companies surveyed say inadequate information in commerce, marketing and service organizations is hampering their ability to deliver satisfying and profitable customer experiences.

"The results of ATG's study reveal a significant problem with the way most organizations approach their customers," said Sheryl Kingstone, Yankee Group program manager for the Customer-Centric Strategies decision service. "It is well known that there is tremendous value associated with a consistent, cohesive approach to customer interactions, but businesses have not yet found the right strategy and supporting technologies to realize this value. A new strategic approach is needed to break down the organizational silos currently standing in the way of mutually rewarding customer experiences."

Complicating the matter is the fact that customers are using multiple channels to interact with companies. For example, respondents reported that nearly 55% of customer service and support interactions are managed over the phone, 24% are handled via Web self-service and 17% of interactions take place over e-mail. With 40% of service organizations listing customer retention as one of their primary goals, it is crucial to maintain interaction continuity and consistently deliver great customer experiences across all channels.

"Having good products or offering low prices is no longer enough to ensure customer loyalty," said Cliff Conneighton, senior vice president of marketing, ATG. "Consumers are demanding better. They want to be treated like individuals, not commodities. This requires businesses to integrate the customer information housed across the marketing, commerce and service functions to start delivering relevant and valuable experiences at every customer touchpoint, regardless of where it falls in the customer lifecycle or what the communication vehicle is."

The survey clearly shows that organizations recognize the need for a new approach. Nearly 70% of respondents have definite plans to implement new features, functions or technologies in the next year to improve their organizations' customer experiences. Another 24% have tentative plans to do the same.

To meet this need, ATG recently announced the ATG Wisdom(TM) strategy the new ATG Service Suite(TM). Companies like Symantec and Conseco Insurance are already working with ATG to deliver the rich, valuable customer experiences necessary to ratchet up customer loyalty and business results.

About the ATG Wisdom Strategy
ATG Wisdom(TM) is ATG's strategy for enabling organizations to deliver a seamless, consistent, and compelling experience to every customer and segment, across channels and throughout the customer lifecycle. Wisdom breaks down the traditional silo-based approach to commerce, marketing and service by informing every customer interaction with comprehensive, contextualized insight into the customer's history, preferences, and activities across the enterprise. The result: every interaction becomes more relevant, efficient, and mutually rewarding. The company fulfills this strategy by providing fully integrated best-of-breed product suites installed on-premise or delivered on-demand.

About the ATG Service Suite
ATG's Wisdom-enabled Service Suite is a comprehensive set of applications that provides a full-featured, dynamic environment for managing all forms of customer service interactions with individual attention. The ATG Service Suite consists of seven integrated applications:

* ATG Knowledge - industry-leading knowledge management platform for call center-assisted customer service
* ATG Response Management - manages inbound e-mail, Web forms, mobile devices
* ATG Self-Service - natural language processing search engine that enables customers to find and act on the exact information they need, regardless of format, location or language
* ATG Forum - peer-to-peer support via community discussion management
* ATG Commerce Assist - complete e-commerce support for Customer Service Representatives
* ATG Advisor - guided problem resolution for agents or Web self-service
* ATG Outreach - time- or transaction-based proactive service integrating both e-mail and the Web

About ATG
ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG) makes the software that the world's most customer-conscious companies use to create a more relevant and consistent customer experience, throughout the marketing, commerce, and service lifecycle, and across the Web, e-mail, call center, and mobile channels. Offering an alternative to the traditional silo-based approach to customer-facing applications, ATG's solutions power over 600 major brands, including A&E Networks, Airbus, American Airlines, American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Boeing, Cingular Wireless, DirecTV, France Telecom, Friends Provident, Hewlett-Packard, Hotels.com, Hyatt Hotels, HSBC, InterContinental Hotels Group, Kingfisher, Louis Vuitton, Merrill Lynch, Neiman Marcus, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Symantec, T-Mobile, Target, USAA, US Army, US Navy, Warner Music, and Wells Fargo. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional locations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information about ATG, please visit www.atg.com.

© 2005 Art Technology Group, Inc. ATG and Art Technology Group are registered trademarks and ATG Wisdom is a trademark of Art Technology Group, Inc. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause ATG's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important risk factors affecting ATG's business generally may be found in ATG's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. Risk factors related to the subject matter of this press release include the possibility that the ATG product deployment will not be successful, on time or significantly enhance the user's Internet experience or handle user volumes; that those customers leveraging ATG won't have the opportunity to increase revenue and decrease future costs; the possibility that the solution will not make customer implementations faster or more flexible or permit the customer to meet its customer-facing or infrastructure requirements; that the customer will not close additional business due to the implementation of the ATG product; that the ATG product will not continue to be integrated with third party applications servers or will not support all Web services enabled systems; and that ATG's product strategy may change in the future. ATG undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.