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Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sento Contact Center Earns "Center of Excellence" Certification
AMERICAN FORK, Utah - January 14, 2004 - Sento Corporation, a leading provider of integrated, multi-channel customer support, announces they have been designated as a Certified Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, and the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University.
Dr. Jon Anton, Benchmark Research Director at Purdue's Center for Customer-Driven Quality, presented Sento with the certification at an awards luncheon during Purdue University's annual "Call Center Campus" Conference in Las Vegas.
"This certification attests to the fact that Sento call center managers have successfully balanced efficiency and effectiveness in their operations," said Dr. Anton. "By optimizing their cost components and their ability to satisfy customers, they exemplify best practices in a very important consumer products sector."
Patrick F. O'Neal, President and CEO of Sento added, "Sento is the first contact point for many of our clients' customers. The role we play in delivering service and support is critical to the satisfaction of each individual customer. This unique certification award validates Sento's effort and dedication to providing best-in-class solutions to all of our corporate clients. We are proud to be part of the highly-select group of call centers that has received this coveted award for customer contact quality."
This certification distinguishes itself by being based on best-practice metrics drawn from the world's largest database of call center performance metrics. Centers that attain certification do so on the basis of objective, quantitative data, which is audited and validated by researchers from BenchmarkPortal and the Purdue University Center of Customer-Driven Quality. Anita Rockwell, BenchmarkPortal's Director of Business Intelligence, worked closely with the Sento quality team to validate the center's performance metrics, and she continues as a key advisor on additional areas of improvement opportunity. She added, "Sento's dedication enabled them to attain certification in less than 90 days. Their investment in benchmarking and certification cost them less than .02% of their overall gross savings achieved within the first five months. This once more proved that certification is not just a quality award. The fact is that our certified centers function at the lowest possible annual operational expense by balancing call quantity and call quality."
Sento call centers have over 750 agents and support personnel, and are capable of handling approximately 10 million calls per year in an efficient and effective manner.
Sento's management team has always aimed at attaining best practices in its call centers, and was delighted to find validation of its vision in the benchmarking and certification process of BenchmarkPortal. The ultimate goal is to make the enterprise more competitive and customer-centric, which also leads to measurable improvements in operational efficiency, and ultimately profitability.
BenchmarkPortal, Inc.
www.BenchmarkPortal.com is the custodian of the Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality database of contact center performance metrics, the largest such database in the world. They provide industry benchmark reports, customer experience benchmark reports, and advisory services for contact centers in the areas of operational metrics, customer satisfaction measurement and agent satisfaction measurement.
SENTO PROFILE
Sento Corporation (www.sento.com) is one of the industry's most innovative providers of outsourced customer support services. Sento employs right channeling to create custom solutions that integrate live support with the company's best-in-class software solutions. Sento's Customer Choice PlatformSM allows customers to make choices in communication channels from a range of web-enabled self-service options with live support available at every critical point. Sento focuses on the inter-relationship among voice, chat, email, self-service and web forums. Sento targets its customer acquisition, customer service and technical support solutions to a diversified portfolio of clients in multiple vertical segments. Sento's solutions can provide value-added customer support at significant cost reductions when compared to other, traditional outsourced models. With operations in the U.S., The Netherlands, and France, plus partnerships in India and other low-cost regions, Sento provides customer support in 19 languages.
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
Statements in this press release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements encompass Sento's beliefs, expectations, goals, hopes or intentions regarding future events. Words such as "expects," "intends," "estimates," "believes," "anticipates," "should" and "likely" also identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements included in this release are made as of the date hereof and are based on information available to Sento as of such date. Sento assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated for a number of reasons, including, among others: the Company's stock price has historically been volatile; difficulties encountered in post-acquisition integration and operation of the acquired assets including retaining existing clients of the acquired company; variations in market and economic conditions; the effect on the Company's earnings of the repricing of options; the Company's dependence on its limited number of key clients; failure to renew existing client contracts for continuation of services; reduction in services requested by the Company's clients resulting in lower revenues for the Company; the Company's ability to complete negotiations and execute client agreements; risk of emergency interruption of the Customer Contact Solutions operations; and other unanticipated factors. Risk factors, cautionary statements and other conditions, which could cause actual results to differ from the Company's current expectations, are contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-KSB, as amended.
Contact:
Patrick O'Neal
President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Sento Corporation
801-772-1417
pat_oneal@sento.com
Anthony J. Sansone
Chief Finance Officer and Corporate Secretary
Sento Corporation
801-772-1410
tony_sansone@sento.com
Brokers and financial industry members
Laurie S. Roop
President, Shareholder Relations
435-652-3884
laurie@shareholder-relations.net
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