Press Releases

Emeryville – 13 May, 2010 – Lithium Technologies, the leading provider of Social CRM solutions to power the customer network, today announced they are working with Genesys from Alcatel-Lucent, a leading supplier of enterprise software that enables best-in-class customer service, to integrate Lithium’s community platform and Genesys’ Customer Service Software. The integration will extend the social networking capabilities of Genesys and deliver an improved customer experience by incorporating community as an intelligently integrated online channel, preserving continuity of service and driving contact center efficiencies.

This new level of integration was designed to help Lithium clients develop stronger, deeper customer relationships by pairing Genesys’ expertise in customer interaction management with Lithium’s market-leading solution for building customer communities and networks. Lithium’s integration with Genesys enables contact center agents access to tribal knowledge and the ability to proactively engage communities. As a result, enterprises will be able to monitor and address customer issues outside of the traditional contact center and better understand conversations taking place across the customer community.

The integration goes beyond the simple access to community posting for Contact Center agents. Lithium can flag community activities that require enterprise attention. The Genesys software suite can then determine the business value and priority and assign that interaction to the ideal resource, be it in the contact center or beyond. For example, a post from a gold customer that has gone unresolved for 24 hours could be automatically escalated to an agent for immediate attention. Combined with Lithium’s Social CRM suite, the solution seamlessly integrates social channels with traditional CRM to provide dynamic customer engagement. This unparalleled implementation cuts across all delivery and customer communication channels to add new value to online communities.

Key Benefits
The joint solution will provide the following key benefits:

• Unifies cross channel conversations and delivers a consistent experience as customers transition from the forum to voice and non-voice channels.
• Reduces support costs over 40 percent by allocating a company’s most valuable resources to higher value business tasks, while the community handles lower value postings.
• Drives intelligent analytics and insights into customer behavior
• Creates a more profitable customer experience and multi-channel choice for customers
• Benefits from the community’s innovation. As members respond to questions, the joint solution incorporates the most highly-rated answers into the corporate knowledge base.

The integrated solution will be showcased at LiNC, Lithium Technologies’ annual customer conference – a gathering of community practitioners, social strategists, and some of the most innovative minds in the industry – May 12-14 in San Francisco. Charlie Isaacs, who leads eServices Strategy, will present Genesys’ vision for the future of Customer Service and discuss how social communities and customer service are coming together.

Executive Comments
"Today more than ever, companies must better understand their clients and manage the quality of their customers' experiences," said Lyle Fong, CEO and Co-Founder of Lithium. "By integrating our expertise in social customer relationship management with Genesys’ leadership in contact centers, we are giving our clients an opportunity to provide seamless and exceptional customer experiences and deliver an unparalleled level of integration. Furthermore, our clients will better be able to develop exceptional products, promote their company by incenting the most valued community users, and drive higher conversion rates and brand awareness.”

"Social Media and Communities has become a critical channel for customer service,” said Nicolas De Kouchkovsky, Chief Marketing Officer for Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise business.”By working together, we enable Enterprises to improve social experiences and maximize efficiencies by optimizing the combination of forum and agent resources. Furthermore, Enterprises can harness their resources in the Contact Center and beyond to avoid leaving the “socialsphere” unattended.”

About Lithium Technologies
Lithium is the leading provider of Social CRM solutions to power the customer network. Working with market leaders such as Best Buy, Sony, AT&T, Research In Motion Limited (RIM), Univision, and PayPal, Lithium is delivering the next generation of customer relationships by unlocking the value of the social customer network. Lithium solutions combine the power of online customer communities with the broader social web and traditional CRM business processes to inspire customers to innovate, promote, and support on the company's behalf. As a result, businesses measurably improve their marketing and sales, accelerate innovation, and increase customer satisfaction. Lithium's platform is proven in high-volume, growth environments and provides the security, analytics, APIs, and multi-language support that enterprises demand. Founded in 2001, Lithium is privately held with headquarters in Emeryville, California. For more information, visit www.lithium.com. Or, engage with us on Twitter, Facebook, and our community – the Lithosphere.

About Genesys
Alcatel-Lucent Genesys solutions feature leading software that manages customer interactions over phone, Web and mobile devices. The Genesys software suite handles customer conversations across multiple channels and resources - self-service, assisted-service and proactive outreach - fulfilling customer requests and optimizing customer care goals while efficiently using resources. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies leverage their entire organization, from the contact center to the back office, while dynamically engaging their customers. For more information, go to www.genesyslab.com

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.

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Lithium Media Contacts:

Michael Paige, Corporate Headquarters & Global, michael.paige@lithium.com , +1 (510) 318 7014
Sandra Teuber, Central & Southern Europe, sandra.teuber@lithium.com , +41 (79) 223 7356
Prelini Chiechi, UK & Northern Europe, prelini.chiechi@lithium.com, +44 (7826) 912788
Imogen Riley, APAC & Australia, imogen.riley@lithium.com, +61 413 274 210