Alcatel’s Genesys helps Betfair, the world’s leading online betting exchange, to increase productivity by 50 per cent

Paris, July 13, 2006 - Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel company (NYSE: ALA, Paris: CGEP.PA), announced today that its Genesys Express Multimedia Outbound solution has enabled Betfair, the world’s leading online betting exchange, to increase the productivity of its outbound customer care centre by fifty per cent. Betfair’s outbound operations were established in 2005 to enhance customer satisfaction and retention, as well as ensure new users know how to use the website effectively. The solution, deployed by Genesys partner BT, uses preview dialing to reduce the time agents spend dialing customers - significantly increasing the number of calls that they can make per day.

“The Genesys Outbound Voice solution has provided us with the high levels of functionality and manageability that we need in our outbound operation. We’ve achieved such rapid results because testing during the implementation process with BT was so thorough that by the time we were fully operational there were no unforeseen problems,” commented Paul Holmes, Contact Centre Analyst, Betfair. “While we were deploying the solution, the expertise of BT ensured that we got the most from the powerful Genesys solution, so now that we have been fully operational for around a year, we have been able to realize some significant benefits from the solution.”

“Outbound calls are an important part of the majority of businesses in the UK, for reasons varying from customer service to customer wins,” added Mark Turner, Vice President and Managing Director, Genesys UK and Ireland. “Being able to initiate contact with customers helped to increase the interactivity of a business, and enables it to stay reactive to the ever-changing needs of the customer. Our solution will also help Betfair to gain greater visibility of its operation and to continually improve its service through enhanced processes. ”

Genesys outbound voice allows contact centres to provide additional levels of customer service by creating, modifying, running and reporting on outbound service campaigns using comprehensive software dialer technology. Outbound voice gathers customer data from host systems or corporate databases, and then places outbound calls and connects callers to agents. It also intelligently leverages existing customer data to ensure that campaigns are contacting the right customers.

About Betfair
Betfair is the world’s leading online betting exchange, a concept it has pioneered. Driven by cutting-edge technology, Betfair enables punters to chose their own odds and bet against each other, even after an event has started. Betfair processes 5 million transactions a day and more than 300 bets per second. For more information : www.betfair.com

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel company, is 100 per cent focused on software for contact centres. Leading companies in the Global 2000 and Fortune 1000 use Genesys to deliver interactions that drive better business. With 3000 customers in 80 countries, Genesys directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day. Genesys allows enterprises to achieve key business objectives by tying together customer interactions, people, and customer information in both traditional telephony and IP environments. Sophisticated routing and reporting across voice, e-mail, documents and Web interactions, coupled with integrated self-service, ensure that customers are quickly connected to the right resource - the first time. Genesys solutions stop customer frustration and allow enterprises to deliver superior customer satisfaction and improved business results. For more information visit us at www.genesyslab.com.

About Alcatel
Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 13.1 billion and 58,000 employees in 2005, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com

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Mireille Holopherne

Corporate Media Relations

Alcatel

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