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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Bluffdale, UT, United States, 04/04/2007 - UCN Inc., the leading provider of all-in-one, off-premises, contact handling technology services, announced it acquired Echo™, a leading hosted call center survey and analysis business (OTCBB: UCNN).
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UCN recently announced the acquisition of Echo™, a customer satisfaction and quality monitoring system, with Web-based management reporting tools that enable call centers to collect and leverage the voice of the customer and track performance down to the agent level. The Echo business, formerly of Benchmark Portal, includes a customer base of 23 companies, of which more than half are Fortune 500 companies.
Under the terms of the agreement, the acquisition is comprised of cash, stock and earn-outs. Initial payment was $500,000 in cash and 1,535,836 shares of UCN restricted common stock. Additional earn-outs could be paid in cash and/or stock if the Echo product achieves certain revenue goals. Up to $2 million in earn-outs would be paid based on existing customer recurring revenue retention over three years. Up to $7 million in additional earn-outs would be paid if significant new customer recurring revenue targets are achieved over the next four years.
“The primary excitement for me in this acquisition is the UCN business model, namely its off-premise and on-demand contact center technology solutions,” said Dr. Jon Anton, founder and director of Benchmark Portal. “I agreed to take this payout primarily in stock because, based on my 20 years in this industry, I see a huge upside to UCN and its growth opportunities in this market. This product solves one of the primary challenges for contact center executives, and that is how to add mission-critical technology that substantially enhances contact center performance while reducing operational cost without using precious corporate capital. In my opinion, UCN only has to get a small fraction of the $5.4 billion dollar contact center market to be very successful.”
Said Paul Jarman, UCN CEO: “With this announcement, combined with our intended purchase of ScheduleQ, UCN enters the fast growing $1 billion workforce optimization market. We become the first on-demand provider to offer unified technology for contact distribution and workforce optimization, enabling us to address the majority of the $5.4 billion market.”
About Dr. Jon Anton and the Center for Customer-Driven Quality™
Dr. Jon Anton is an Adjunct Professor at Purdue University, the research director at the Center for Customer-Driven Quality™ at Purdue and director of Benchmark Portal. The Center for Customer-Driven Quality was founded by Dr. Anton at Purdue University in 1995. The Center focuses on industry-sponsored research and training in all aspects of customer service with a special emphasis on the customer contact center. Dr. Anton has assisted over 400 companies in improving their customer service strategy and delivery.
About UCN, Inc.
UCN (ucn.net) is the leading provider of all-in-one, off-premises contact handling services that improve the customer contact experience and the productivity of those handling the contacts. InContact® includes an integrated suite of core contact handling applications, including contact routing, interactive menus, database integration, automated surveys, reporting, monitoring, recording, administration and workforce management applications. InControl™ is a unique, rapid application development tool that enables inContact customers to develop highly flexible, customized business contact handling processes in record time.
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jan.johnson[.]ucn.net 
