Verizon Business Receives Prestigious 'Speech Technology' Magazine Award

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Verizon Business has been recognized by Speech Technology magazine as a Star Performer for hosted speech services.

The magazine highlighted Verizon Business' Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) suite of products and services, a key offering within the innovative Verizon Business Contact Center portfolio.

The Speech Technology Magazine 2007 Star Performer Award -- intended to recognize those companies and individuals raising the bar with speech technology products, services and initiatives -- was announced during a luncheon at the SpeechTEK trade show on Aug. 22 in New York.

"Increasingly, corporate and government customers are trusting Verizon Business to deliver world-class customer contact center solutions," said Leonard Klie, senior editor of Speech Technology.

The magazine also cited recent awards Verizon Business received from Frost & Sullivan for the Contact Center product line as well as recognition the company has received within the call center industry.

The company's award-winning Hosted IVR product line uses speech technology and touch tone commands to provide sophisticated call treatment and transfer capabilities while enabling caller self-service transactions. The Hosted IVR product line includes Enhanced Call Routing (ECR), Global ECR, Speech Services and Internet Protocol (IP) IVR.

Verizon Business provides large-business and government customers with tools that enable them to create and manage call plans, providing customer control of applications - in an open or hosted environment.

"This award recognizes that our Contact Center portfolio of solutions can help drive our business and government customers' processes to meet their missions," said Mike Marcellin, vice president of global product marketing with Verizon Business.

"With our feature-rich technology and experience, we deliver flexible solutions that can be tailored to support the various business models for an enterprise - whether it is workers at home or located in a regional call center. We continue to upgrade our interactive voice response portfolio to incorporate technological advances like developments in speech recognition and natural language research," Marcellin said.

Verizon Business Contact Center solutions help companies manage inbound and outbound customer communications while controlling costs and improving service. In addition to Hosted IVR, Verizon Business offers a range of Contact Center services, such as Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) and Intelligent Contact Routing (ICR), to manage the distribution of voice and data traffic to agents based on business rules, agent skills and real-time priorities. Verizon Business' Professional Services and Service Delivery teams can provide hosted, managed and premises-based Contact Center solutions, as well as tailored combinations of all three.

Verizon Business is one of the largest providers of advanced data, Internet and voice communications services worldwide.

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 communications, security and other 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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