10th May 2004

LONDON, UK -- Fluency Voice Technology, a leading global provider of packaged speech recognition applications, today announced that it is providing services to JD Williams to automate call centre activities.

JD Williams is the UK's leading direct home shopping company. Founded in 1875 it now has over 2m customers and sales in excess of £400m. The company operates a range of 22 direct catalogues, from Simply Be to Heather Valley. Appealing to all ages and specialising in providing outstanding fashion for size 16+ women they also have focused footwear and lingerie offers in Shoe Tailor and Naturally Close. Internet sales across the titles now account for over 10% of sales, with some titles as high as 30%. From their sophisticated 1,000 seat contact centre in the heart of Manchester, JD Williams handles 15 million calls per year, both inbound and outbound.

JD Williams looked to Fluency to provide call centre automation without compromising the superior levels of customer service their customers have come to expect. The solution will enable them to automate 3 million calls per year, thereby freeing up call centre agents to focus on more complex customer service enquiries.

Fluency will provide a range of speech-enabled self-service applications for JD Williams allowing customers access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to complete a number of tasks. The solutions will be delivered in four phases:

• Catalogue requests
• Credit and debit card payments and off-the-page orders
• Simple account enquiries
• Catalogue orders

The first phase will be available to customers in June 2004.

Graham Green, JD Williams' IT and CRM Director comments "We chose Fluency because of their proven expertise in delivering robust and scalable speech recognition solutions to some of the world's leading organisations. Our differentiation lies in our outstanding levels of customer service, and we see speech recognition as complementary to the services we offer, allowing us to handle greater numbers of more complex calls, thereby improving our customer service levels."

Alex Green, Fluency's CEO added "JD Williams is one of the most respected brands in retail and always at the forefront of technology and innovation. We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with them."

The call centre automation will be facilitated by Fluency's award winning VoiceRunner™ platform and deployed on IBM® WVR/WVS. VoiceRunner™ is a VoiceXML applications platform based on open-standards and components that enable organisations to deploy speech recognition systems rapidly, flexibly and at low installation and ongoing cost. The platform facilitates integration into existing systems, such as JD Williams' management information and reporting systems. The graphical drag-and-drop configuration tool allows non-skilled personnel to easily make simple changes to call flows and dialogues, reducing the cost of maintaining the system and providing flexibility to the business.

Fluency Voice Technology is a leading global provider of packaged speech recognition applications for use in call centres. Our solutions enable large enterprises to significantly reduce costs and enhance customer service. We provide sector specific applications that allow the automation of high volume contact centre activities. Key sectors for which we have developed applications are Financial Services, Travel & Transport, Utilities, Retail and Telecommunications. Fluency has offices in the UK, US and India. For further information please visit www.fluencyvoice.com

About JD Williams

JD Williams is the UK's leading direct home shopping company.