MapQuest and NetByTel Partner to Add Speech Recognition to World's Most Popular Location Finder
Companies Can Now Take True Multi-Channel Approach - Offering Customers Ability to Locate Businesses On the Web or Over the Telephone
DENVER, Colo. and BOCA RATON, Fla., March 29, 2004
MapQuest, the world's leading online location based services and solutions company, and NetByTel, an industry leader in telephone self-service solutions, today announced a strategic partnership that will offer MapQuest customers the ability to speech enable their location technology applications through NetByTel's award winning voice self-service capabilities.
The partnership provides MapQuest business clients with a mechanism for their customers to access store locations over the phone. Not only will MapQuest customers be able to provide a greater level of customer service and response through adoption of the NetByTel Voice Locator, but companies will see significant cost savings from the new voice automated deployments. NetByTel's voice location finders enable callers to search for the closest businesses, products and services via speech input. Callers can search by phone number, zip code, address, intersection or city/state combination to find the nearest locations of retail outlets, banks, gas stations, and more. Call Centers can seamlessly integrate the new NetByTel Voice Locator into their current call flow and increase customer satisfaction by presenting multiple options for locations that meet a consumer's specific needs.
"NetByTel and MapQuest have come together to provide businesses with a true multi-channel customer experience and a powerful hosted solution that will let corporations utilizing the MapQuest Advantage products to extend their current Web and wireless application to the telephone. With the NetByTel partnership, MapQuest customers will be able to deliver consistent results across multiple channels, while managing a single location database and thus offering true cost savings and efficiencies one would expect," said Walt Doyle, Vice President and General Manager of MapQuest Business Solutions.
"We understand the challenge that retailers and consumer product manufacturers face when it comes to the delicate balance of providing exceptional customer service while still staying in check with the company's bottom line expenses," said John Amein, president and CEO of NetByTel. "By partnering with MapQuest, we are able to show our clients that they can easily leverage their existing Web technology to add a voice self-service component helping bring their customer service to a whole new level."
For more information about MapQuest products email sales@mapquest.com.
About NetByTel
NetByTel® delivers the best telephone self-service experience for callers. Developed and deployed with NetByTel's VoiceServ® platform, NetByTel's hosted solutions help clients save money, improve their customer's experience and enhance their brand image. For more information, visit the company web site at www.netbytel.com.
* NetByTel, the NetByTel logo and VoiceServ are trademarks of NetByTel, Inc. All other products or services mentioned are the property of their respective holders.
About MapQuest
MapQuest helps people find places. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado and Mountville, Pennsylvania, MapQuest offers Web, Wireless, Business Solutions, and Published products worldwide. MapQuest.com, both the top mapping and directories site on the Web according to comScore Media Metrix, served 38 million users in February 2005. MapQuest also empowers more than 1,400 businesses with software solutions to location-enable Web and wireless applications, and is a leading provider of custom mapping content for publishers and corporations, producing more than 1.5 billion pages of printed maps every year. MapQuest.com Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of America Online, Inc.