Extreme Networks Selects noHold Instant Support to Solve 60 Percent of Inquiries from Technical Users

noHold's expert diagnostic system will provide immediate online self-service response to help technicians install and configure new networks quickly and easily.

Milpitas, Calif., USA- September 10, 2001 - noHold, Inc., the leading provider of Web-based self-service solutions, has agreed to provide its Instant Support™ to Extreme Networks (NASDAQ: EXTR), a leader in Ethernet broadband networking solutions. Instant Support, noHold's Web-based proprietary query-and-response inferential engine that responds immediately to inquiries, will help technicians install and configure networks from Extreme quickly and easily.

"About 60 percent of all our customer service calls involve repetitive questions," said Skip Wangbickler, vice president of customer advocacy for Extreme Networks. "Each call was costing upwards of $45 because of the technical nature. So it was logical to conclude that a diagnostic artificial intelligence like Instant Support was the most efficient and cost effective way to handle issues like these."

Typically, self-service solutions cost just over a dollar per support session. In pre-launch testing at Extreme, Instant Support successfully answered 70 percent of the questions and solved 90 percent of the problems it was presented. The success rate will continue to improve because Instant Support becomes "smarter" over time.

"Many companies now are looking toward customer support as a way to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace," said Diego Ventura, founder and CEO of noHold. "Customers now want immediate solutions to their problems, and they'll go where they can find them. Instant Support is becoming a strategic tool for companies that want to maintain their leadership."

noHold's Professional Services Group built the Extreme Networks knowledge platform from 2,500 pages of documentation, including user guides, error decoders, release notes, command reference guides, and other data for several versions of the company's networking software.

noHold's expert system interacts with this knowledge database to provide the single best relevant answer to a user's question so they don't have to sift through a list of document links, wait days for email response, or wait on "hold" for a support rep. On the back end, Instant Support's metrics and authoring capabilities allow Extreme Networks to monitor the system's success rate, capture unresolved questions and problems, and continuously update the database.

Users access noHold Instant Support through an interactive chat-like portal on a company's Web site. Typically, users can troubleshoot their problems in three or four clicks. Instant Support can be configured easily, and it seamlessly escalates unresolved issues to a service rep via email, chat, or telephone, as required by the user.

The Instant Support inferential engine offers many advantages over FAQs, search engines and menu-driven systems because it delivers targeted solutions, not general answers or links to documents that require additional research. Unique algorithms allow forward and backward chaining and branch swinging, so users can carry on a discussion that feels like a live conversation.

With Instant Support, companies can reduce customer support overhead, improve customer retention, and increase revenue by simplifying and accelerating the means to solve problems and answer questions. Instant Support can also leverage a company's existing knowledge bases by accessing, making sense of, and integrating legacy data into the response.

About noHold, Inc. noHold is the leader in Web-based self-service knowledge management solutions that diagnose and solve complex technical problems and provide information to users, 24x7. noHold Instant Support, the company's flagship product, is a virtual support agent designed for customer service, technical support, marketing and sales support, human resources, financial services, and other information-rich organizations to build profitable and labor-efficient relationships with their employees, customers, prospects and suppliers. With noHold Instant Support, users can resolve problems and obtain actionable information quickly, without waiting on hold.

noHold is a privately-held company established in 1999 and headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., USA (Silicon Valley). It has sales offices in San Diego, Calif., and Washington, DC. Its leading customers include AT&T Broadband, Cisco Systems, Logitech, and Aspect Communications. Additional information is available at www.nohold.com. Send e-mail to info@nohold.com, or phone 408-946-9200.