etalk Qfiniti Allows Midamerican Energy To Go Beyond Quality Monitoring

Irving, TX - February 17, 2004 - etalk Corporation, the global leader of Performance Impact™ solutions for contact centers, announced today that MidAmerican Energy, the largest utility in Iowa, has selected etalk´s flagship product, Qfiniti® to achieve greater operational efficiencies and increased accuracy within its billing center.

Qfiniti is a powerful comprehensive contact center quality management solution, incorporating transaction recording, performance evaluation, results-oriented training, and analytical reporting into one inclusive product. MidAmerican Energy selected Qfiniti because of its robust screen capture capabilities that allow the company to monitor the daily activities of internal applications. Qfiniti´s easy-to-use design does not require any programming expertise to set-up screen recordings, and is as simple as typing in the application name to capture screen recordings from that application.

Qfiniti´s screen-capture feature is particularly important for MidAmerican Energy´s billing department where managers are capturing screen activity to assess the usability and functionality of billing procedures, and to monitor general agent activity. This unique implementation outside the contact center allows MidAmerican Energy to gather data to help it refine its billing processes, track customer satisfaction in resolving billing issues and more effectively train agents its sees as having difficulties with new programs.

“When we first met with etalk, we had some immediate needs for refining our quality monitoring program but we also had a vision for how to grow the program in innovative ways that would task etalk with coming up with new ways to use their products, both in and outside our contact center,” said Megan Wanek, Workforce Management System Administrator at MidAmerican Energy. “Because etalk´s team has the depth and breadth of experience in the quality monitoring space, they were able to think outside the box and help us achieve our business goals by giving us some unique functionalities. The addition of Qfiniti to our quality monitoring program brings it to a whole new level.”

Roger Woolley, vice president of marketing for etalk states, “The ways in which MidAmerican Energy is using etalk´s products go beyond the basic capabilities of most quality monitoring solutions. By optimizing Qfiniti to gather data to improve business processes, the company is able to get the full picture of how its customer service reps are doing both in and outside the contact center. This is a great example of how we are able to come into a customer´s site, assess the situation and match the functionality of our products to meet their business objectives.”

Qfiniti is the newest addition to MidAmerican Energy´s successful quality monitoring program in which etalk´s products have been in place for the past six years. MidAmerican Energy first began using etalk´s Performance Impact solutions in its quality monitoring program where etalk Recorder® replaced the company´s archaic call recording equipment consisting of handheld tape recorders. This in turn, freed up its supervisors´ time by automating the time-consuming task of manually recording calls and greatly increased the number of calls that could be recorded for each agent.

Additionally, MidAmerican Energy also uses etalk Survey™ to conduct inbound surveys to assess the effectiveness of the call center associate, and outbound surveys that assess the effectiveness of the company´s field technicians on orders issued by its call center associates. Survey was originally designed specifically with inbound calls in mind; however, in working with etalk, MidAmerican Energy was able to modify the system to fit its outbound needs as well. This means that MidAmerican Energy is not only realizing the cost savings from handling inbound surveys in an automated fashion internally, the company is also achieving cost-savings on the outbound field technician surveys as well.

About MidAmerican Energy Company
MidAmerican Energy Company is the largest utility in Iowa and is strategically located in the middle of several major markets in the Midwest. The company provides service to more than 680,000 electric customers and more than 660,000 natural gas customers in a 10,600 square-mile area from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois. For additional information about MidAmerican Energy, visit www.midamericanenergy.com.

About etalk
etalk is a global leader of Maximum Performance Impact trade; solutions for enterprise contact centers. Since its inception in 1983, etalk solutions have been used to build valuable long-term customer relationships at more than 1,500 worldwide contact centers. The etalk suite of integrated solutions, including the Qfiniti trade;, JASS trade;, Recorder reg;, Advisor trade;, Expert trade; and Survey trade;, improve both customer service and the CRM decision-making process. Using his combination of etalk acute;s award-winning products and outstanding services, customer can design, implement and continually refine their quality program initiatives, achieving their overall business objectives. etalk operates in more than 40 countries through its Worldwide Business Partner Program. For more information, contact etalk at www.etalk.com.