BEDFORD, Mass., May 7, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SoundBite Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:SDBT) today announced it is now a preferred service provider for TSYS (NYSE:TSS) and the two companies will work together to help financial institutions improve their proactive customer communication strategies. Using SoundBite's Intelligent Communications Platform, financial institutions can easily leverage a unified, multi-channel solution that includes automated voice, text and email messaging to communicate with their customers and improve response rates for card activations, collections, fraud management, cross-selling initiatives, customer surveys, prepaid top-up and loyalty program participation.
"Developing close relationships with customers and keeping them informed is more important than ever for financial institutions," said Mark Friedman, Chief Marketing Officer for SoundBite Communications. "TSYS has a history and tradition of providing innovative technology solutions to its clients, which include more than half of the top 20 global banks, and we look forward to working with TSYS to help financial institutions reach their customers using their preferred communications channel."
In today's challenging economic times, a proactive customer communications strategy is critical to quickly reach consumers with important and often time-sensitive information regarding their account status. Recent studies have shown that customers prefer different channels of contact based on the specific communication. A 2008 Mercator report found issuers deploying proactive customer communications realized a 300 percent improvement in card activations; that same report revealed more than 100 percent increase in collections using a multi-channel communications strategy.
"Adopting a consumer preference-based communications strategy is key for our clients who are looking for ways to communicate more effectively with their customers," said Matt Jardina, Group Executive for Value Added Products at TSYS. "Through our relationship with SoundBite, TSYS can provide our clients with additional, strategic communication options powered by a best-in-class technology to help them increase customer loyalty, collections, risk management, revenue and retention which all contribute to improving their competitive position."
SoundBite's integrated, multi-channel platform is well suited for today's financial services organizations and was recently named one of the most innovative technologies in financial services by Bank Technology News in 2008. Additionally, the service provider is compliant under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a key requirement for working with financial institutions and card issuers.
About TSYS
TSYS (NYSE: TSS) is one of the world's largest companies for outsourced payment services, offering a broad range of issuer- and acquirer-processing technologies that support consumer-finance, credit, debit, debt management, healthcare, loyalty and prepaid services for financial institutions and retail companies in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions. For more information, contact news@tsys.com or log on to www.tsys.com.
About SoundBite Communications, Inc.
SoundBite Communications provides on-demand, integrated multi-channel communications solutions that enable clients to achieve superior business results. Building on its foundation as a leading provider of automated voice messaging services, SoundBite offers integrated voice, text and email messaging solutions that help clients deliver the right message, to the right customer, using the right channel, at the right time. Organizations in industries such as collections, financial services, retail, telecom and media, and utilities rely on the SoundBite Intelligent Communications Platform to send over a billion messages annually for collections, customer care, and sales and marketing applications. For more information, visit http://www.SoundBite.com.
SoundBite is a registered service mark of SoundBite Communications, Inc.
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