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Remedy Citizen Response Provides Adaptable eGovernment Citizen Support Solution to Local, State, and Federal Government Agencies Public Sector Organizations Exceed Citizen Expectations While Managing Costs And Improving Staff Productivity SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Remedy(R), a BMC Software company (NYSE:BMC), today announced the availability of a new version of Remedy Citizen Response, the company's customer support application for the public sector. The new version improves agent productivity through automation, intelligence and reporting, thereby helping public organizations, such as federal, state, or local government agencies, respond faster, more consistently, and more accurately to citizen requests, resulting in improved citizen satisfaction and reduced costs. Today, citizens and businesses expect public sector organizations to provide service comparable to that provided by the most efficient commercial organizations. Additionally, government services organizations are under increased pressure to provide improved services without further taxing overburdened budgets. Designed specifically for the needs of the public sector, Remedy Citizen Response is the only application for the public sector that provides out-of-box functionality to manage the non-emergency support calls made to a government by its constituents. It also takes advantage of the business process automation capabilities of Remedy's Action Request System to allow unique functional needs to be quickly incorporated. This functionality allows public organizations to log and track citizen issues, suggestions, and requests for information received via any channel, and provides the capability to manage and track the entire resolution process, even when other departments' involvement is required. According to John Kost, managing vice president for Government at Gartner, Inc., "Today's public organizations are struggling with how to affordably close the service expectation gap that exists between their current service delivery capability and the service levels demanded by the citizens they serve. By implementing well-planned, effective eGovernment contact center solutions, such as 3-1-1, public organizations enable citizens to get answers and services more effectively and with less hassle while at the same time improving the efficiency of service delivery." A specific focus of Remedy Citizen Response 5.01 has been the quickly emerging need for the consolidation of citizen facing call centers in city and county governments. Known as 3-1-1 initiatives, these call centers provide a single point of access for all non-emergency citizen inquiries and requests for service, whether the request must go to the department of public works, department of licensing, traffic, or sanitation, for example. These 3-1-1 call centers centralize citizens' inquiries and complaints, which greatly improve a municipality's service to its constituents, but also provide new challenges to the locality including the need to: -- Handle very diverse inquiries which requires significant agent training and support -- Track and provide complete visibility for all requests, until resolved (regardless of the department from which they require service). -- Provide citizens with multiple channels to submit requests -- Integrate to multiple legacy and enterprise systems Remedy Citizen Response addresses these challenges and improves agent productivity through automation, intelligence, and reporting, regardless of whether the citizen inquiry concerns road repairs, contractor licensing, or tax questions, Specific features new or enhanced in this version of Remedy Citizen Response include: -- Automated scripting for data collection - intelligent scripting that guides staff or citizens through the process of recording data, ensuring that the right information is gathered to resolve the inquiry more quickly. -- A knowledge base to store commonly used solutions, policies/procedures, and solutions from previously resolved issues, improve resolutions statistics, and leverage time previously invested in solving citizen problems. -- Dedicated user consoles to combine a task-oriented approach with specialized data organization and display user consoles to enhance the productivity of agents and supervisors. -- Web self service screens to facilitate citizens' access for issue logging and smart searching, providing 24X7 support while deferring calls into the call center. -- Remedy Service Level Agreements to help define and manage performance down to the individual inquiry level for either internal or external benchmarks. "With more than 1,100 customers in the public sector, Remedy has acquired a unique knowledge of governmental needs, said Harold Goldberg, vice president of worldwide marketing and business strategy for Remedy. "This version of Remedy Citizen Response leverages that knowledge, and extends the solutions available to meet the changing needs of citizen facing eGovernment." About Citizen Response Based on technology used in the award-winning Remedy Customer Support, Remedy Citizen Response enables support staff to quickly log inquiries, review call histories, view attachments, and search for solutions. It can also automatically assign issues to appropriate support representatives based on specific criteria -- such as area of expertise, department, request type or workload -- ensuring requests get assigned to the right person at the right time. Federal/Central government agencies use Remedy solutions to collect economic survey data from businesses; manage citizen complaints from telemarketing organizations; track and resolve consumer complaints concerning financial institutions; respond to requests from program beneficiaries for info on entitlements; manage employee requests for health insurance and pension benefit information. State and local governments use Remedy solutions to record, track, and resolve citizen inquiries and requests; provide ubiquitous access to citizens, whether by kiosk, walk-in, phone, or Web; consolidate citizen inquiry history for better responses; meet service level agreements in responding to information requests from the public; help agents improve productivity and performance. About Remedy, a BMC Software Company Remedy, a BMC Software company, delivers Service Management software solutions that enable organizations to align internal and external service and support processes to business goals. More than 10,000 customers worldwide, from small and mid-sized businesses to global enterprises, have chosen Remedy's IT Service Management and Customer Service and Support software to automate their support processes, improve service levels, manage assets, and lower costs. Remedy's highly flexible, best-practice applications enable enterprise-wide Business Service Management and allow customers to easily adapt to unique and changing requirements. Remedy customers include 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies and 50 percent of Global Fortune 500 companies. Remedy customers worldwide have employed solutions developed throughout the company's 14 years of product evolution and investment. Locate additional company and product information at http://www.remedy.com/ . Remedy and Action Request System are registered trademarks of BMC Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030528/REMLOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: Remedy CONTACT: Tamara Doney of Remedy, +1-916-645-6233, or ; or Julie Redard of Porter Novelli, +1-617-897-8234, or , for Remedy Web site: http://www.remedy.com/ http://www.bmc.com/

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