Salt River Project Receives Prestigious Award for Transforming Customer Service and Improving Contact Center Efficiency With Solutions From NICE Systems

TEMPE, Arizona, August 4, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salt River Project (SRP) the third-largest public power utility in the United States and the largest provider of water and power to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, has received the 2010 Speech Industry Award from Speech Technology magazine for leadership and superior performance in the application of speech technologies. SRP received the award based on its implementation of advanced Customer Dynamics optimization solutions from NICE Systems, including NICE Interaction Analytics, NICE Quality Management, NICE IEX Workforce Management, and NICE Customer Feedback.

SRP implemented the NICE solutions when it opened its new contact center in 2009, to help address the growing needs of its nearly one million customers. By utilizing the advanced capabilities of the NICE solutions, SRP's contact center management has improved agent behaviors for increased customer satisfaction, addressing the key business issues that impact call center effectiveness and efficiency, and better aligning the business with the strategic goals of the enterprise.

"This year, SRP was honored as the highest-ranked power company in customer satisfaction in the US West, according to a survey by JD Powers & Associates," said Mike Lowe, Customer Services Executive at SRP. "This is the 9th consecutive year we have received this honor and reflects the strategic importance we as a company place on ensuring customer satisfaction and is also the reason why we decided to go with NICE. The NICE business solutions and unique technological capabilities have given us the ability to dramatically increase both customer satisfaction and our contact center efficiency in delivering world-class customer service."

SRP won the Speech Technology magazine award for significantly increasing its ability to capture customer intent and understand why customers are calling, thus gaining insights into what is needed to improve customer experience, while delivering a quantifiable impact on the overall business. Among the results NICE solutions have helped SRP achieve are a 25 second reduction in average call handling time, increased agent productivity with a correlating six percent reduction in labor hours year over year, lowered operational expenses, decreased requests to escalate calls, and a decrease in caller dissatisfaction levels.

Speech Technology selected SRP as a winner in the "Implementation" category, a distinction awarded to end-user companies that have garnered impressive results from recent speech technology deployments including financial return, productivity gains, improved efficiencies and better customer service. Speech Industry Awards are determined by the editors of Speech Technology magazine with input from a range of speech industry experts.

"Speech Technology magazine's industry awards are presented for accomplishments that truly stand out," says David Myron, editorial director of Speech Technology magazine. "To be recognized, the recipients must have demonstrated real leadership, innovation and achievement."

According to Udi Ziv, President, Enterprise Product Group, NICE Systems, "SRP is a perfect example of a NICE customer that has fully grasped and embraced the value of optimizing Customer Dynamics and all the possibilities that NICE - in particular Interaction Analytics - offers. We are proud to have provided the tools that have supported SRP in achieving its vision of a customer-centric culture."

About Salt River Project

Salt River Project the largest provider of water and power to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, serves more than 935,000 electric customers.

About NICE Systems

NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the leading provider of intent-based solutions and value-added services, powered by advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content - from telephony, web, radio and video communications. NICE's solutions address the needs of the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and operational performance and ensure safety and security. NICE has over 24,000 customers in more than 150 countries, including more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. More information is available at http://www.nice.com.

Salt River Project Media Contact:

Jeff Lane SRP, +1-602-236-2500, [email protected]

NICE Media Contact, North America:

Virginia Pellerin, NICE Systems, +1-201-964-2682, [email protected]

SOURCE Salt River Project (SRP)