The company also established a wholly-owned subsidiary, SoundBite Communications UK, Limited, to meet the growing demand for its proactive customer communications solutions in Europe. This move enables SoundBite to establish dedicated staff based in the UK to accelerate its European growth strategy.

"We use SoundBite Engage across the US to communicate quickly and efficiently with our consumers," said Sheila Monroe, director, global risk operations at Barclaycard. "We're extremely pleased with the results and, more importantly, the positive comments and feedback we've received from our customers. After successfully piloting the product in the United Kingdom we are now planning to deploy the solution across our European businesses and are looking forward to working with SoundBite to achieve our goals."

Barclaycard will use SoundBite EngageTM, its multi-channel communications platform, in multiple European countries, while the other financial services provider plans to deploy SoundBite in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain. The reseller partners working with clients in Europe and Africa include Telsolutions, a UK-based premier supplier of automated voice messaging services and strategies, and JV Communications, a France-based supplier of proactive customer communications.

Global Demand for Proactive Customer Communications
Companies worldwide are adopting proactive customer communications strategies using voice, text and email messaging to reach consumers more effectively and efficiently with timely and relevant information that positively influences their behaviour. Using preference management to contact customers the way they want, organisations can often experience higher customer satisfaction and customer retention, better campaign results and an improved return on investment. The SoundBite Engage platform includes new functionality to further support its multi-national clients who require global communications strategiesstrategies.

"We are in the midst of a major paradigm shift as multi-national organisations evolve from a reactive to a proactive posture for customer communications," said Jim Milton, president and chief executive officer of SoundBite Communications. "Accordingly, we have invested in internationalising SoundBite Engage, and establishing a UK subsidiary, as we see a tremendous opportunity to bring our proactive customer communications offering to Europe. The momentum we are gathering with our two recent major European wins validates our belief."

"We use SoundBite Engage in South Africa and France and have plans for future expansion into other countries across Europe," said Gregory Bonnefoy, director, International Operations at JV Communication. "SoundBite's secure and highly-scalable VoIP platform enables us to support a wide variety of proactive customer communications on behalf of our clients in the banking, automotive, insurance, and travel industries."

"Most recently, we used SoundBite Engage to deliver campaign notifications to voters in the United Kingdom," said Rob Perry, chief executive officer of Telsolutions LTD. "As a SoundBite reseller we are able to offer our clients interactive solutions through a proven, multi-channel communications platform. Recent global enhancements to SoundBite Engage enable us to deliver more value-added services to our European clients."