NCO and SoundBite Communications Expand Relationship

HORSHAM, Pa. and BEDFORD, Mass., March 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- NCO Group, Inc. ("NCO"), a leading global provider of best-in-class business process outsourcing solutions, announced today that it recently expanded its long-standing relationship with SoundBite Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDBT), a leading provider of cloud-based proactive customer communications solutions, in an effort to broaden its multi-channel, proactive customer communications offering to the contact center marketplace.

Complementing NCO's live agent, chat, and social media solution offerings, SoundBite brings its full suite of multi-channel communications solutions to the relationship – including automated voice messaging, inbound IVR, hosted dialer, interactive mobile messaging, and email. The offering broadens the existing relationship between the two companies and enables NCO to offer one of the industry's most complete set of customer contact strategies to its clients.  The expanded offering will service new and existing markets including retail, financial services, utilities, telecom, and healthcare.

Specifically regarding the healthcare industry, NCO's healthcare services offering is heavily focused on patient contact.  This expanded relationship positions NCO to increase patient contact and satisfaction by communicating with patients based on their communications preferences, whether it be by live agent, automated voice message, text, chat or email. Furthermore, it enhances patient services efficiencies by automating messages and reminders for appointments, payments, and the full range of patient contact.  

Commenting on the NCO-SoundBite expanded relationship, Steven Leckerman, NCO's EVP and Chief Operating Officer, stated, "By leveraging SoundBite's technology, we are very pleased to offer our clients a leading-edge customer contact and preference management solution.  SoundBite's technology will enable us to further expand NCO's multi-channel proactive customer communications across all industry verticals.  We continue to seek ways to optimize ROI for all of our clients' voice and non-voice applications.  This bundled NCO solution creates a proven and seamless proactive communications offering for our clients."

Added Jim Milton, President and CEO of SoundBite Communications: "Organizations worldwide recognize the increasingly important role that proactive communications plays within their contact centers. Our expanded relationship with NCO will deliver the benefits of SoundBite's cloud-based, multi-channel communications platform to contact centers who wish to communicate more effectively with their customers across a variety of communications channels." 

For more information on the expanded NCO-SoundBite relationship, visit www.ncogroup.com or www.soundbite.com.

About NCO Group, Inc.

NCO Group, Inc. is a leading global provider of business process outsourcing services, primarily focused on accounts receivable management and customer relationship management. With a network of approximately 30,000 employees, supporting the global market, NCO provides services through more than 100 offices throughout North America, Asia, Europe and Australia.

About SoundBite Communications

SoundBite Communications is a leading provider of cloud-based, multi-channel, proactive customer communications solutions designed to transform the way organizations communicate throughout the customer lifecycle to build trusted, lifelong and profitable relationships. Clients can leverage SoundBite's proactive customer communications offering and expertise in designing, executing and optimizing communications strategies to engage in relevant customer interactions that deliver long-term business value. Visit SoundBite.com for more information.

SoundBite is a registered service mark of SoundBite Communications, Inc.

(SDBT-G)

SOURCE NCO Group, Inc.