Cetelem guarantees optimum customer care service for its customers thanks to M>WebTouch, MATRAnet's customer interaction solution for Web-based businesses

Redwood Shores, California - November 15, 1999 -MATRAnet, Inc., a leader in Internet customer interaction solutions, today announced that Cetelem, Europe's leading consumer credit institution, has selected M>WebTouch to help it deliver first-class customer care service to its online customers.

Cetelem, which launched its online consumer credit service six months ago, quickly realized many business transactions -- such as personal loans to renovate a house -- call for a high level of interactivity between the customer and financial advisor that stretches far beyond a simple exchange of e-mails. Cetelem therefore needed a solution that would allow it to maximize the possibilities of online customer transactions while delivering the same quality of service that their customers would normally obtain if they were face to face with a financial advisor.

Each week, Cetelem advisors handle credit requests from hundreds of online customers using M>WebTouch. The solution respects the ergonomic design of the Web site and is only active if a Cetelem advisor is present.

"This rules out the risk of a visitor browsing the site and being invited to start up a dialogue with an advisor outside our business hours when nobody is there to answer their e-mail," points out Dominique Losay. "Offering a service and then not delivering it would be disastrous for our corporate image and would ultimately have a negative impact on traffic."

"After reviewing several solutions, we selected M>WebTouch from MATRAnet for its ability to add a human touch to e-business," said Dominique Losay, Development Director at Cetelem. "M>WebTouch, allowed us to get up and running very quickly and is the most comprehensive, scalable solution available today. It enables a live, interactive dialogue with customers. What's more, it offers detailed traffic analysis of the web site and provides each agent with customer profile, click-through analysis, and complete history of past and present interests of the individual on the other end of the net. As far as our target population is concerned, the Internet enables us to accelerate the decision-making process, so fast-flowing exchanges via the Web are essential. By making these exchanges more interactive, spontaneous, and complete, M>WebTouch allows us to address the specific needs of each credit request, deliver real-time firstñclass customer care in a natural conversational mode, thereby successfully transforming our prospects into loyal customers."

Cetelem opted for the chat/Voice over IP version of M>WebTouch. While the Voice over IP component is not yet available on the web site, the group has earmarked this technology as a future business driver and intends to make it fully operational once it becomes market-ready.

To fully integrate it with the other Cetelem applications, M>WebTouch is hosted by Integra, a MATRAnet channel partner, who also takes care of maintenance issues.

About M>WebTouch

M>WebTouch provides any company the ability to leverage existing human capital through the web by engaging and communicating with consumers in a variety of ways including live, interactive chat, form-based e-mail response or direct e-mail messaging. Now, emerging and established e-businesses can dynamically track, profile and target key prospects among all visitors, and provide the means to interact with them to close the sale cycle successfully.

Typical applications for M>WebTouch include those that require direct agent to consumer contact such as online sales, marketing, training, service & support.

The first contact a potential customer has with a company via the Internet is often by e-mail. With its intelligent call routing and e-mail management tools, M>WebTouch handles this essential function automatically, efficiently, and with a high degree of granularity, thereby ensuring quality customer care.

M>WebTouch dynamically tracks customers each time they visit a site, instantly providing the retailer with customer profiles and details on their areas of interest. The intelligent routing system then connects potential customers to the most suitable agent capable of dealing with their query. A dialogue can occur either via e-mail or directly via live, interactive chat.

Finally, M>WebTouch provides retailers with real-time web analysis and review capabilities to assess their site performance by understanding customer-browsing patterns. With M>WebTouch, companies can quickly evaluate the impact of their online presence on brand awareness and revenue. With M>WebTouch, companies can accurately measure the effectiveness of their Web-based marketing campaigns (advertising, content, etc.) and analyze their site traffic in greater depth.

M>WebTouch starts at $10,000 (excluding tax) for the e-mail version and $15,000 (excluding tax) for the Chat version. M>WebTouch is written in JAVA and is currently supported on Microsoft (MSFT) NT, Sun Microsystems (SUNW) Solaris, and various LINUX platforms; Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase (SYBS) databases.