Intervoice

Bob Vance currently directs and manages speech application and customer service related architecture and software development at Synapse Group, Inc. - a leading subscription agent for the publishing industry. Bob and his team recently completed a conversion to the OSR recognizer from Nuance. The speech application team has a long history of success, most recently distinguishing themselves as recipients of Time, Inc.'s prestigious President's award in 2003 for their last major platform conversion. The team created a highly personalized, web-service based application on the Intervoice IQTalk platform, using the SW65 recognizer. Since the conversion, the web-service based platform was extended ('04-'05) to create Synapse's live agent Web application - linking the ASR IVR platform to call center operations. Currently, the platform is being further extended to support the addition of Web-based customer self-service and serves as a main starting point for the company's growing SOA initiatives.

Rob Solomon joined HSN as Senior Vice President of Customer Care in December of 2003. Responsible for providing stellar customer service to the millions of viewers who watch and shop on HSN TV and hsn.com, he oversees the sales and service and performance support services teams in St Petersburg, FL and Roanoke, VA, as well as the operations and technologies team based in Florida. Prior to joining HSN, Mr. Solomon worked at Ticketmaster, an operating business of HSN's parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp, most recently serving as Executive Vice President of Contact Centers for Ticketmaster-ticketing, Match.com, Reserve America, Vista and Ticketweb. In this role, he was responsible for the successful integration of 16 customer care centers, which supported Ticketmaster's diverse array of businesses, into 3 strategic, comprehensive centers. Before being appointed Executive Vice President in 2000, Mr. Solomon was Ticketmaster's Vice President of Call Center Operations, where he was responsible for 13 U.S. call centers with over 3,000 teleservice representatives. Additionally, he oversaw the development and design of two new call centers to meet the demands of new teleservice business and identified strategic locations for centers throughout the country to house various client businesses. Mr. Solomon has also held senior positions with Electronic Processing Source and Continental Guest Services in New York. A native of New York, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science Management degree from Pepperdine University.

As Nuance?s Vice President and General Manager for the Care Business Unit, Lynda Kate Smith is responsible for the strategy and execution of the Company?s care/call center business, which includes solutions for business to consumer, business to business and business to employee operations. Prior to assuming the General Manager role, Smith served as a strategy consultant to the Company and was the Chief Marketing Officer for the legacy Nuance operation prior to the Company?s acquisition in 2005. Smith began her call center/customer care career in the late 90?s with Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories (a subsidiary of Alcatel) where she served as a marketing executive and ultimately the Company?s SVP of worldwide marketing. Smith has also held executive marketing and sales positions at Lockheed Martin Telecommunications, American Eurocopter, MBB Helicopter Corporation and Multi-Service Corporation. Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Simpson College and a master degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Smith is on the faculty of Stanford University where she serves as a guest lecturer for the Management Science and Engineering Department.

John Falvy is the Director of Contact Centers for FirstEnergy Corp. As such, he is responsible for inbound customer contacts received by telephone, fax, web and customer correspondence. John began his career at Ohio Edison in 1977 as a meter reader in Akron. He advanced to customer service training instructor in 1982, and to Superintendent of Customer Account Services in 1991. In 1994, John was promoted to Superintendent of customer accounts in Youngstown. He was named Eastern Region Director of Customer Services in 1994 and promoted to his current position in 1999. John received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education from The University of Akron in 1980, where he also earned a Master of Science degree in Technical and Industrial Training in 1992. His community activities include fundraising for the Boy Scouts and United Way. John also served on the Mental Health Board for Mercy Hospital.

Dr. Jon will host this Benchmark Portal Session where he will discuss best practices for personalizing the customer service experience. This informative and interactive session will educate Contact Center professionals on tapping into new technologies and methods to make every customer feel like your most valued. Each attendee will leave with a certification by Benchmark Portal. Immediately following Dr. Jon?s presentation will be an overview of the Intervoice Customer Experience Practice, which assists Intervoice customers in implementing personalization services in the contact center.

Working with Intervoice Global Consulting Services, Matt will share how Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama increased percentage of valid screen pops from 60% to 80% of all calls through an improved User Interface and consolidated all member IVR applications and provider applications into master application utilizing existing code in other contact center applications.

Sharon is a guest executive on the Contact Center Personalization Best Practices panel. J.D. Power and Associates announced that T-Mobile ranked highest in Wireless Customer Care for the fourth reporting period in a row. Learn how T-Mobile uses speech automation to help personalize the customer experience.

Todd Kent is the Senior Manager for Client Interactions at Synapse Group, Inc. in Stamford, CT. In his current position at Synapse, a leading Subscription Agent for the magazine publishing industry, he is responsible for driving business growth and profitability by identifying and leveraging automated customer management solutions across the customer life cycle from prospecting to retention. Since 2002, he has directed key speech-based application projects at Synapse starting with their conversion from Telera to InterVoice. This project was awarded the prestigious Time, Inc. President's Award in 2003 and recognized for achievements in both revenue generation and cost savings. Most recently, he oversaw the platform wide conversion to Nuance's OSR speech recognizer. Todd has held IT and business management positions for the past twelve years spanning Insurance, Global Services Consulting, Consumer Package Goods, and Media/Marketing industries and has extensive experience developing, leading, and managing large, cross-functional teams for high-value projects. While currently focused on customer management technologies and solutions - including IVR and Speech technologies, other key initiatives have included agent-based EDI implementations/rollouts, distributed insurance underwriting and billing systems, global product registries, data center consolidations/moves, B2B and B2C Web commerce applications, PeopleSoft financials migration, and a variety of IT and business integration and consolidation projects. In addition to IVR/Speech forums, Todd is also active in the PMI , ASQ , UPA , and AVIOS professional communities in the New York City metro area.

Diana Beebe has more than 11 years of experience as a technical writer, with most of that time spent as the lead online help writer in RoboHelp. In addition to writing online documents in RoboHelp and Eclipse (and some dabbling in Flare), she manages a small team of writers at Intervoice, Inc. She is a Senior Member of STC. She has a B.A. (English) from TCU and an M.A. (Literature) from UT-Dallas.

As Vice President, Account Service, Jim supervises all M/C/C account managers and promotes the vitality of all client/agency partnerships. Jim's relationship-based approach to advertising and public relations is built around two principles. He's relentless in his understanding of our clients' businesses, and he builds personal collaboration between clients, agency employees and industry players. Jim came to M/C/C in 1998 as an account manager. Since then, he's moved up quickly, thanks to his drive to take charge and get results. A hardcore believer in strategic brand development, Jim has led integrated marketing programs for clients including CapRock Communications, InterVoice-Brite, Vari-Lite International and Raytheon. Before joining the agency, Jim worked at Temerlin McClain on the GTE account. Previously, he worked for McCann-Erickson and Fogarty, Klein & Partners. Jim graduated from Texas State University with a degree in Marketing.

Joseph McGinnis is a leader in the field of Customer Service with over 20 years experience. His service philosophy is to deliver an experience that is easy, financially efficient and satisfying to the customer. Joe joined SIRIUS Satellite Radio as Director of Customer Care in October of 2003. In 2003 SIRIUS had 100,000 subscribers and Joe's mission was to build a customer service strategy that would support rapid growth of a brand new industry that would be subject to constant change. Today with 6 million plus customers and a volume of more than 40,000 calls a day, Joe has built an outsourced strategy for SIRIUS Satellite Radio that focuses on leveraging operational efficiency while ensuring a superior customer experience. In addition to managing the steady state growth of the business, he has also had to develop and execute the plans to support incredible spikes in the business, sometimes doubling total staff, around major holidays for short periods of time. Prior to joining SIRIUS, Joe worked in the Banking industry. He held a number of positions in this field all focused on the customer experience. His last position prior to joining SIRIUS was with FleetBoston Financial as Senior Vice President of Telephone Banking Performance Support. In this role he was responsible for improving customer favorability and enhancing the employee experience through training, communications, quality assurance, employee listening and reward & recognition programs. Joe is a graduate of Delaware Valley College, Pa. and resides in Hoboken, NJ.

Mr. Gerald F. Montry became a director of the Corporation in May 2000 and became Chairman in May 2008. Since 1998 Mr. Montry has been the Managing Partner of Mont Reuil & Co., a private investment firm. From 2002 to 2008 Mr. Montry served as a member of the Board of Directors of Intervoice Corporation, a developer of voice recognition and speech automation applications and held positions of Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Audit Committee. From 1986 through its acquisition by Alcatel in 1998, Mr. Montry served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of DSC Communications Corporation, a telecommunications equipment provider. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to his tenure at DSC, Mr. Montry held management positions within the Aerospace, Defense and Computer industries.