Leading Analyst Firm Positions Helpstream in CRM Customer Service Contact Center Magic Quadrant Report

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire - April 15, 2009) - Helpstream, the leading provider of fully integrated community-driven customer service solutions, today announced they have been included in Gartner, Inc.'s "CRM Customer Service Contact Centers"(1) Magic Quadrant report by Michael Maoz, Research Vice President and Distinguished Analyst. Gartner's Q209 Magic Quadrant looks at "contact center desktop software for customer service and support that is best-suited for different economic situations. Leading vendors are showing how their solutions can lower costs while driving customer loyalty."

As business executives focus on customer service to retain customers in the current economic climate, more companies are looking at ways to leverage web-based customer communities to lower support costs while simultaneously improving customer loyalty.

Helpstream's innovative solution tightly integrates robust community-based self-service capabilities with traditional knowledge base and case management functionality. This unique integration delivers a modern, web-based customer service system that transforms the customer service experience and reduces overall support costs.

"The negative shift in the economic picture has elevated this focus because customer retention requires greater scrutiny," wrote Michael Maoz in the Gartner report. "The loss of a profitable customer, or a potentially profitable customer, is expensive and preventable. The contact center, which integrates and synchronizes post-sale customer interactions, is the most-critical flashpoint for the customer relationship."

"The days of the traditional contact center are numbered. Customers no longer look first to company staffed support representatives for help -- they look first to the web and they look for others just like themselves to help them answer questions and solve problems," said Anthony Nemelka, president and CEO of Helpstream. "We believe placement in the Gartner Magic Quadrant reflects how the changing demographics of consumers is fundamentally changing the way companies need to be delivering customer service. Our community-driven customer service approach is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this paradigm shift in the market."

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted April 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Helpstream

Helpstream's fully integrated community-driven customer service system helps companies reduce overall customer support costs while increasing customer satisfaction and retention. Helpstream integrates social web technologies with modern customer service and collaboration processes to drive effective customer and partner engagement across all business functions. Helpstream's SaaS design makes it fast to deploy, easy to use and affordable. It can be deployed as a complete customer service system or as an integrated self-service and community case resolution complement to existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. More than 150 customers and 300,000 users access Helpstream regularly to share information and discover solutions to everyday customer service problems on the web. Helpstream is headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visit: www.helpstream.com.

(1) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers" by Michael Maoz, April 3, 2009.

Contact Information: Media Contact Jesse Odell LaunchSquad 415.625.8555 hstream(at)launchsquad(dot)com