New eGain software includes nine new applications, and enables customer service innovation through customer interaction hubs

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — eGain Communications (OTCBB: EGAN.OB), a leading provider of customer service and contact center software for in-house or on-demand deployment, today announced a major new release of its customer interaction hub (CIH) software suite.

Jointly conceived and developed by eGain and its blue-chip customers, eGain Service 7.6 suite includes nine new applications and directly addresses the mindset of today’s consumers, who expect choice of communication channels and superior service quality when interacting with their favorite brands. The software suite combines deep knowledge management and process automation tools with a rich set of applications for managing the ever-growing volume of interactions through traditional as well as emerging communication channels. The CIH approach centralizes channel management, knowledge bases, business rules, and analytical engines in one place, and drastically reduces the cost of managing multiple channels while improving customer experience and process efficiencies.

eGain’s new suite is the first to support short message service (SMS) customer service interactions, as well as next-generation web self-service, chat, cobrowsing, email, fax, postal mail, notification management, call tracking and resolution, knowledge management, and service fulfillment.

eGain Service 7.6 is built on eGain CIH™ Platform, the industry’s most comprehensive, integrated, and flexible customer interaction hub platform. Based on a 100% J2EE architecture, it includes out-of-the-box integration with leading business applications, content management systems, and call center infrastructure solutions. The fine-grained service-oriented architecture of the platform enables rapid development of powerful custom applications.

“To gain competitive differentiation during the next five years, leading enterprises will invest in building a customer interaction hub,” said Esteban Kolsky, Research Director at Gartner. “The CIH model enables the business to learn and meet or exceed customer expectations across all communication channels.”

Penn Foster Career School, one of the oldest and largest distance learning institutions in the world, has recently implemented eGain Service 7.6. Currently used by more than 60 agents, the solution has already enabled the institution to reduce response times by half. Furthermore, Penn Foster expects to handle a 50% increase in customer service traffic while curbing service costs. The school is also using the software to automate service processes involving subject matter experts, within and outside the contact center, when student inquiries require resolution that extends beyond the initial interaction. As part of its customer interaction hub vision, it plans to implement the chat and web self-service solutions in eGain Service 7.6 to further improve the quality of interactions with students.

"We are committed to meeting the lifelong learning needs of adults," said Rob Bruno, Vice President of IT at Penn Foster Career School. "eGain Service 7.6 will enable us to provide prompt and effective service to our student base. This service level, together with the quality of our education offerings, will help ensure that we are the preferred institution for distance learning."

New applications in eGain Service 7.6

Self-service

• eGain MessageCenter™: Enables secure communication of sensitive information through email between the customer and the business, and enables customers to view all their interactions through an authenticated website.

Assisted service

• eGain Adviser™: Empowers agents—whether they are novice, expert, in-house, or outsourced—to handle complex customer interactions that entail not only informational and transactional customer service, but also contextual upsell and cross-sell, follow-on service fulfilment, and value-added advice through conversations that are compliant with regulations and corporate best practices. The solution includes a highly flexible user interface, integrated workflow, and interactive process guidance, powered by eGain’s Inference® reasoning engine, a proven technology used by enterprises for over 15 years.
• eGain CallTrack™: Provides phone call logging, tracking, resolution, and follow-on service fulfillment.
• eGain SME™: Allows customer service agents to collaborate with subject matter experts (SMEs) within and outside the contact center to speedily respond to an inquiry.
• eGain SMS™: Provides a flexible system for managing customer interactions done through SMS, an increasingly popular channel of interaction.

Process automation

• eGain AutoClassify™: Helps companies shorten the turnaround time on inquiries by intelligently classifying and routing incoming emails and other inquiries. The solution uses eGain’s Inference® reasoning engine for more advanced and robust classification of inquiries than simple keyword matching.
• eGain AutoWorkflow™: Works with eGain Workflow™ Engine and eGain Adapters™ to execute service processes that do not need human involvement.
• eGain Notify™: Helps manage and deliver event-based reminders, alerts, and updates at any stage of a customer transaction or the overall customer lifecycle.
• eGain Survey™: Helps contact centers, ecommerce sites, and customer portals solicit and act on customer feedback to improve and grow customer relationships.

“eGain continues to win deals on the strength of its platform and an increasingly process-centric message,” writes Chip Gliedman, VP of CRM Research at Forrester. “The vendor’s attention to business processes has made it a leader in eService process orientation and it is winning deals, particularly in Europe, where modeling and executing processes are key deal attributes.” (The Forrester Wave: eService Suites Q2 2006, Forrester Research, Inc., May 2006).

“eGain has delivered a series of industry-firsts over the last decade, and we continue that tradition with eGain Service 7.6, the most complete customer interaction hub solution available in the market today,” said Ashu Roy, CEO of eGain. “A direct result of our collaboration with leading clients, who are at the forefront of customer service innovation, the solution can enable any enterprise to differentiate itself through stand-out customer service.”

Immediately available on a worldwide basis, eGain Service 7.6 can be deployed on-demand or on-premise. Details on the solution are available at http://www.egain.com/products/index.asp.


About eGain
eGain (OTCBB: EGAN.OB) is a leading provider of customer service and contact center software for on-premise or on-demand deployment. Trusted by prominent enterprises worldwide, eGain has been helping organizations achieve and sustain customer service excellence for more than a decade. 24 of the 50 largest global companies rely on eGain to transform their traditional call centers, help desks, and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs. These hubs enable dramatically improved customer experience, unified multichannel customer service, end-to-end service process efficiencies, and enhanced contact center performance.

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has an operating presence in 18 countries and serves over 800 enterprise customers worldwide. To find out more about eGain, visit www.eGain.com or call the company's offices: 800-821-4358 (United States), 1753-464646 (UK and rest of Europe).

eGain, the eGain logo, Inference, and all other eGain product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of eGain Communications Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names and products mentioned in this release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies.

Media Contacts
Carlos Mangandy
The Hoffman Agency for eGain
Tel: 408-975-3004
Email: cmangandy@hoffman.com

Maeve Naughton
eGain Communications Corporation
Tel: 650-230-7449
Email: pr@egain.com