Unified Communications Solutions Increase Customer Satisfaction

BOSTON, MA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- April 19, 2007 --In the newly released benchmark report "Improving Customer Satisfaction through Unified Communications," Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), found that Best-in-Class organizations are four times more likely to be "very satisfied" with productivity of their workforce compared to all the others.

The report analyzed organizations' use of Unified Communications, including IP telephony and Unified Messaging to better understand how Best-in-Class organizations leveraged the technology to improve their workforce's productivity and increase employee and customer satisfaction. Almost 200 organizations worldwide contributed their experiences to the study in order to be heard. The Best-in-Class organizations represent the top 20% of the responding organizations and are defined on the basis of Process, Organization, Knowledge and Technology. "Best-in-Class organizations are deploying Unified Communications more deeply and broadly than all others and are reaping the rewards from those efforts," said Philippe Winthrop, Research Director for Wireless and Mobility research. "They are achieving higher workforce productivity than all other organizations."

The report shows a strong correlation between the deployment of Unified Communications applications and workforce productivity. As nearly four times more Best-in-Class organizations have implemented IP telephony and unified messaging solution than the industry average, they are able to translate those implementations into improved customer satisfaction levels. As part of that performance increase, Best-in-Class organizations are also three times more likely as all other organizations to measure customer satisfaction in real-time, showing that these organizations look to continuously improve the benefits and value of their Unified Communications deployments. "More than 80% of these organizations have in fact seen increases in the ROI of their implementations over the last two years," said Winthrop.

The report, underwritten by Siemens and Microsoft, provides readers with findings on how best-in-class organizations are exploiting Unified Communications technologies compared to others, and recommends clear actions to take. Technology adoption, employee productivity and customer satisfaction, as well as other key performance indicators are reviewed. A complimentary download of the report is available at: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=3937

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

Contact Information: Media Contact: Philippe Winthrop Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5231 Philippe.Winthrop@aberdeen.com