Verizon Business Receives 2007 Frost & Sullivan Market Leadership Award for Hosted IVR Contact Center Services

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Verizon Business is the 2007 recipient of Frost & Sullivan's Market Leadership Award for Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services.  A new report from Frost & Sullivan, a leading industry analyst firm, highlights Verizon Business' continual demonstration of innovative contact center solutions to meet the unique needs of its large-business and government clients.

A key component of the Verizon Business Contact Center portfolio, the Hosted IVR product line includes Enhanced Call Routing (ECR), Global ECR, Speech Services and Internet Protocol (IP) IVR.  Verizon Business was selected for the award after attaining market leadership through the development and delivery of these advanced services for its customers.  Frost & Sullivan found that Verizon Business displayed excellence in all aspects of the market leadership process, including identifying market challenges, drivers and constraints, and for developing and executing a strategic plan to address these market dynamics. 

"Verizon Business has a long heritage and significant strengths within the hosted contact center services market," said Seema Lall, contact center strategic analyst, Frost & Sullivan.  "Hosted IVR services represent a strategic growth market for the company and one that it has penetrated with a great deal of success and demonstrated leadership.  Verizon Business has excelled in staying ahead of the curve in understanding and responding to its customers' requirements." 

By successfully capitalizing on its IP assets and expertise to introduce IP Toll Free and IP IVR services, Verizon Business now enables customers to easily integrate contact center data and voice applications, to efficiently manage geographically dispersed operations and help companies transition at their own pace from time division multiplexing (TDM) -- a method for sending multiple digital signals along a single telecommunications transmission -- to IP.  

"Going forward, Verizon Business' expansive IP infrastructure will allow the company to retain its lead in the Hosted IVR market by controlling costs and cutting time-to-market for innovative new capabilities," continued Lall.

Tom Roche, vice president, network voice and data services for Verizon Business, said, "The key factors for staking out our lead within the Hosted IVR space include a feature-rich and technologically strong product portfolio, deep understanding of hosted services dynamics, deployment value chain, and the ability to leverage our core strengths as a leading network service provider.  We continually upgrade our IVR portfolio to incorporate the latest technology advances such as developments in speech recognition and natural language research."

Verizon Business offers sophisticated tools that help customers maintain visibility and control over their contact center applications, even in a hosted environment, helping to ease the concern with perceived loss of control over critical customer care operations.

Using the advanced capabilities of the Verizon Business Customer Center, Contact Center Service customers can simply and effectively order products, manage their networks, view and pay invoices, and access tools and tickets.  These capabilities include Verizon IP Toll Free, which routes incoming toll-free calls over IP to enable greater efficiency and support multiple-contact media, such as phone calls, e-mail or instant messaging from around the globe; and Verizon Business' Dashboard feature, which empowers customers with a near real-time view of their network from one portal. 

Frost & Sullivan also determined that in addition to leading technology, a key advantage for Verizon Business is the company's ability to address customer needs via integrated solutions.  They include Intelligent Call Routing (ICR), as well as Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), workforce management and quality monitoring. 

Verizon Business complements its product portfolio with a skilled and experienced Professional Services organization that manages all facets of Verizon Business' Contact Center implementation projects, including systems design and integration, software development and post-implementation production support.  The Professional Services organization provides custom development and consulting services to customers, helping set Verizon Business apart from the competition. 

About Frost & Sullivan Market Leadership
The Frost & Sullivan Award for Market Leadership is given to the company that has exhibited market share leadership through the implementation of market strategy.  The recipient has displayed excellence in all areas of the market leadership process, including the identification of market challenges, drivers and restraints, as well as strategy development and methods of addressing these market dynamics.  Furthermore, the Award recipient has continually demonstrated solutions for monitoring market changes and for implementing superior market strategies.  By utilizing these strategies for success, the company has established itself as the market share leader in its respective industry.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years.  The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities.  Frost & Sullivan serves and extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects the unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics and demographics.  For more information, visit www.frost.com.

About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a leading provider of advanced communications and information technology (IT) solutions to large business and government customers worldwide.  Combining unsurpassed global network reach with advanced technology and professional service capabilities, Verizon Business delivers innovative and seamless business solutions to customers around the world.  For more information, visit www.verizonbusiness.com.

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