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Salesforce Service & Support Delivers New Milestones in On-Demand Customer Service

SAN FRANCISCO - August 6, 2007 - Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Salesforce Service & Support is delivering new milestones of success in on-demand customer service. Thousands of companies, including American Water Heater Company, R. L. Polk & Co. and Corporate Express, already run their customer support operations on Salesforce Service & Support, and more than 500 companies have standardized on Salesforce Service & Support since February. Building on this momentum, Salesforce Service & Support was recently positioned by Gartner in the visionaries quadrant in the 2007 CRM Customer Service Contact Centers Magic Quadrant . Finally, salesforce.com's partner ecosystem continues to invest in Salesforce Service & Support, setting an unprecedented pace of innovation. To support this growing product line, salesforce.com has introduced a number of new products including Salesforce Call Center Edition and Salesforce Customer Portal, while sixteen salesforce.com partners have delivered 59 Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) connectors for telephony systems - the most in the on-demand industry. 

"Salesforce Service & Support is delivering a world-class customer service solution that more than 500 companies have standardized on since February," said George Hu, CMO of salesforce.com. "By delivering a world class customer service solution that can be deployed in weeks and provide customers with the power and flexibility they need to respond quickly to customer issues, Salesforce Service & Support is setting the on-demand standard for the industry."

Salesforce Service & Support Delivering Innovation for Customers
Launched in September of 2004, Salesforce Service & Support has long evangelized the benefits of on-demand technologies for the call center. Salesforce Service & Support is the only product on the market today that helps companies totally reinvent the service experience with a highly-efficient application that can be deployed quickly and easily. Service managers can react in real-time with reports and dashboard that help them manage customer SLAs and call center performance and can customize the application in minutes to respond quickly to business changes. And, because Salesforce Service & Support is built from the ground up as a Web service, companies can turn any browser, anywhere in the world into their own call center desktop - instantly integrating outsourced, offshored or homeshored agents. The incredible momentum achieved in recent months only confirms the benefits salesforce.com is bringing to the customer service industry. In fact, according to Gartner "by 2013, at least 75% of customer service centers will use a form of S-a-a-S (software as a service)."

"Salesforce Service & Support has enabled us to improve the way we capture and share information throughout our organization," said Keith Overbay, supervisor of warranty administration at American Water Heater Company.  "Because the system is so easy to use, we can forget about the technology and focus on our business and our customers."

Call Center Edition - Bringing CTI to On-Demand
As with all salesforce.com applications, Salesforce Service & Support leverages the full power of the Salesforce Platform so service organizations can stay ahead of changing business needs and move as fast as their customers demand.  In addition, Salesforce Service & Support customers benefit from a continuous stream of innovation in customer service technology, both from salesforce.com and AppExchange partners. 

Salesforce.com made CTI one of the most significant features of the Salesforce Winter '07 release with the introduction of Salesforce Service & Support Call Center Edition delivering unlimited productivity to call centers. Salesforce Call Center Edition has enabled businesses to reap the benefits of Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) with over 50 connectors, developed by sixteen partners, available for Salesforce customers on the AppExchange. These connectors enable Salesforce customers to connect to 48 different telephony systems, or PBXs such as Avaya, Cisco, Envox and Genesys - the most in the on-demand industry. Now, salesforce.com customers can integrate with millions of business phone lines.

Salesforce.com has an open partnership strategy for CTI.  This approach gives customers the freedom to choose the telephony infrastructure and CTI that makes sense for their business.  In just a few short months, the AppExchange community has already released 59 CTI connectors from sixteen different vendors, demonstrating the power of the Salesforce Platform and the appeal of integrating Salesforce Service & Support and other Salesforce applications with telephony infrastructure.  This competitive market for CTI benefits Salesforce customers with regular innovation that drives down the traditionally high costs of CTI.

"Envox Worldwide was one of the first partners to provide salesforce.com customers with a CTI connector because we recognized the significant potential of combining the power of CTI with Salesforce Service & Support," said Mark D. Flanagan, president and CEO of Envox Worldwide. "Our product, Envox PhoneLink, ensures that Salesforce Service & Support customers can take the logical next step to integrate CTI capabilities to derive the full potential of on-demand and make all of their call center's vital information and tools accessible in one place." 

Salesforce Customer Portal
Salesforce.com's unprecedented pace of innovation continued with the introduction of the Salesforce Customer Portal in April. The Salesforce Customer Portal is a next-generation customer self-service portal that enables companies to build loyalty by engaging with customers inside a secure, branded online environment.  Salesforce Customer Portal provides each customer a unique online experience for finding answers quickly, resolving issues online and connecting with other customers through online communities.  Unlike traditional portals, which are painfully slow to create, customize, and deploy, each Customer Portal is delivered 100% on-demand and can be customized to a company's exact specifications within hours.

Magic Quadrant Disclaimer
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted March 2007 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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