Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Avaya as North American Market Leader in Interactive Voice Response

NEW YORK, Aug. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SpeechTEK -- Avaya Inc. , a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, today announced it has received Frost & Sullivan's 2007 North American Market Leadership Award for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) based on its leading market share and strategy in IVR solutions.

According to Frost & Sullivan's latest research(1), Avaya leads the North American IVR market with a 22.7 percent share. The company's success is led by sales of the Avaya Voice Portal, a software platform that uses Web Services to provide companies with a faster, easier way to deliver speech-enabled self- service across highly distributed enterprises.

"Through product innovations that make it simpler for companies to deploy speech-based self service solutions, Avaya is building on its large installed base and finding increased success in the market," said Ian Jacobs, senior analyst, Frost & Sullivan. "The company has seen a triple-digit increase in its Voice Portal shipments over the past year, contributing to the company's significant growth in the self-service arena."

For more information regarding Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards, go to http://www.awards.frost.com/.

In a separate release today, Avaya is announcing the debut of new software releases for Avaya Voice Portal, Avaya Interactive Response and other solutions in the company's self-service and IVR portfolio. The company's solutions are used by organizations as diverse as direct marketing giant Harte Hanks and the interpretation service, Language Line.

At Harte Hanks, Avaya's award-winning Voice Portal is helping the organization better route calls for technical support to improve the customer experience. Callers are prompted to request the kind of help they need in natural spoken language. Their response is used to route automatically calls to the most appropriate agent -- whether the customer needs help with a specific problem or advice from a specialist. Harte-Hanks has made significant reductions in average call transfer times, getting customers to agents more quickly.

Language Line (http://www.languageline.com/) uses Avaya Voice Portal's high- availability and multilingual capabilities to provide on-demand, over-the- phone interpretation services in more than 170 languages to customers around the globe. The company is able to distribute self-service support across its contact center infrastructure, which helps to ensure callers reach appropriate interpreters quickly -- regardless of where in the world they are based and whether they are working in a company contact center or taking calls from home.

"Avaya's leadership in IVR solutions is a result of steps we have taken to help ensure that businesses can maximize the benefits of self-service in an era of Intelligent Communications," said Jim Smith, vice president and general manager, Customer Service Applications Division, Avaya. "By embedding IVR applications with the latest standards-based speech technologies and offering simplified ways to develop new self-service applications, Avaya can help organizations enhance customer service for greater business results."

This week Avaya is showcasing products in its self-service software portfolio -- Avaya Voice Portal, Avaya Dialog Designer and Avaya Interactive Response -- during SpeechTEK 2007, a leading speech industry event scheduled for August 20-22 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City.

About Avaya

Avaya delivers Intelligent Communications solutions that help companies transform their businesses to achieve marketplace advantage. More than 1 million businesses worldwide, including more than 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500(R), use Avaya solutions for IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centers and Communications-Enabled Business Processes. Avaya Global Services provides comprehensive service and support for companies, small to large. For more information visit the Avaya Web site: http://www.avaya.com/.

(1) North American IVR Systems Market. 2007. N185-76. Frost & Sullivan