Viseca Card Services Adds 100,000 Customers Following Implementation of Siebel Service(email this article)

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 10, 2003-- Siebel Systems (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL - News), a leading provider of multichannel eBusiness applications software, today announced that Viseca Card Services has acquired an additional 100,000 customers following its deployment of Siebel Service. The introduction of multilingual customer service best practices among 100 contact center agents has enabled the leading Swiss credit card issuer to resolve up to 95 percent of inquiries at the initial point of inquiry, answer 80 percent of calls within 15 seconds, and reduce the lost call ratio to below 10 percent. By transforming the service experience of its existing 890,000 customers, Viseca has been acquiring more customers and is maximizing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

"Viseca has defined service leadership as a major business direction, and to ensure the company delivers excellent service quality, we needed a single, coordinated view of customer relationships," said Dr. Michael Flaschka, chief operating officer, Viseca Card Services. "Siebel Service provides Viseca with a best-practice, flexible, and scalable approach to managing customer relationships, growing the business, and enhancing service processes. This visionary CRM solution is empowering Viseca's highly motivated team to successfully serve almost 1 million customers today -- and many more tomorrow."

Prior to implementing Siebel Service, Viseca's systems tracked customers through credit card numbers rather than through the customer. When customers contacted Viseca, customer care agents switched between the credit card transaction system and the outdated customer contact management system to resolve inquiries. As a result, agents had limited knowledge of customers' profiles, their history with Viseca, and their inquiries, all of which made resolution challenging. It took a disproportionate amount of time to respond to customer requests, an excessive number of requests were escalated to a second level of support, customers were often kept waiting to speak to an agent, and it was difficult to create a record of activities in the system.

Today, the rich, out-of-the-box functionality of Siebel Service enables Viseca's 100 customer care center agents to quickly and accurately resolve customer requests -- in French, German, Italian, or English -- using the customer's preferred channel of communication. The complete view of the customer's profile, history with Viseca, credit limit, and status of outstanding and closed service requests allows agents to quickly and accurately resolve most inquiries. In fact, first-call resolution rates are now above 95 percent, and Viseca answers 80 percent of calls within 15 seconds. Because a greater number of inquiries are resolved more rapidly, customers now reach an agent more quickly -- the result being that the lost call ratio has dropped to below 10 percent.

Enhanced management reporting is also fueling the improvements. Siebel Service provides a comprehensive dashboard view of traditional operational metrics -- such as order backlogs and wrap-up time -- which Viseca acts upon to improve operational performance and customer satisfaction. The information is also used to identify customers that are susceptible to attrition and card cancellation. The company can review the value of these customer groups and quickly create compelling messages aimed at minimizing churn.

More information about Siebel Service is available at www.siebel.com/products/service/index.shtm.

About Siebel Systems

Siebel Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of eBusiness applications software, enabling corporations to sell to, market to, and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. With more than 3,500 customer deployments worldwide, Siebel Systems provides organizations with a proven set of industry-specific best practices, CRM applications, and business processes, empowering them to consistently deliver superior customer experiences and establish more profitable customer relationships. Siebel Systems' sales and service facilities are located in more than 28 countries.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Siebel Systems may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with customer relations, such as the availability of Siebel Systems' products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Siebel Systems are included in Siebel Systems' Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Siebel Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.

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