Bell Canada signs seven-year, contract with large Canadian financial institution

IBM teams with Bell Canada to drive the transition to the new platform based on Cisco Systems IP contact centre technology

MONTREAL, QC, April 27 2006 - Bell Canada, today announced a seven-year, contract with Toronto-Dominion Bank Financial Group (TDBFG) to implement a fully outsourced IP-based contact centre solution for the Bank.

Bell Canada will work with its partners IBM Canada and Cisco Systems Canada to implement the solution and migrate TD's contact centre technology to an IP-based platform.

TD Bank's IP contact centre technology solution will provide the following key benefits:

• An extensible enterprise-wide infrastructure, that routes calls to the first available agent with the appropriate skills to handle specific customer needs;
• The integration of multiple channels providing customers with an improved and consistent call experience, and;
• Location flexibility and extendibility by leveraging the existing IP network infrastructure allowing agents' the ability to utilize any feature, anytime, anywhere.

As TD's single point of contact, Bell Canada will be responsible for converting the Bank's entire Contact Centre infrastructure including: Interactive Voice Response (IVR), call routing, switching, call recording, work force management and reporting capabilities. The Solution supports 94 locations and over 6,300 agents. IBM will help lead the transition from TD's current platform to the new IP-based system, as well as develop and support ongoing call recording and performance reporting capabilities for TD contact centre agents. Cisco will provide the core IP contact centre technology including; IP Voice Gateways, Customer Voice Portal, Cisco Unified CallManager and IP phones.