Press Releases

Coremetrics and BizRate Forge Strategic Partnership to Measure the Value of Customer Satisfaction

Industry-First Partnership Enables Retailers To Integrate Real-Time Customer Feedback With Behavioral Analysis To Precisely Analyze How Customer Response Affects ROI

Burlingame, CA – May 21, 2002 – Coremetrics™, the leading web services provider of online marketing analytics solutions and BizRate, the #1 comparison shopping site and a leading provider of real-time e-commerce research, today announced a strategic partnership that enables retailers to precisely measure the value of customer satisfaction, and identify which customer service initiatives should be adjusted to optimize ROI. Under the terms of the agreement, Coremetrics will integrate BizRate's customer feedback data into its online marketing analytics platform to enable in-depth analysis of customer segment behavior and attitude. For the first time, retailers can precisely analyze how customer attitudes impact online revenues.

"Until today, retailers were forced to make educated guesses about the impact of customer satisfaction on the bottom line," said Scott Kauffman, president and CEO of Coremetrics. "For the first time, our clients will be able to combine real-time customer feedback with behavioral data to understand how aggregate consumer attitude affects online revenues. This joint solution from Coremetrics and BizRate allows our mutual clients to accurately determine what customers are doing as well as what they are thinking. We are pleased to partner with the uncontested leader in customer satisfaction surveys to provide our clients with ROI analysis that is simply not available elsewhere in the market."

BizRate.com is the only company to measure the complete customer experience comprising 10 customer satisfaction metrics, captured at the point-of-sale and through fulfillment surveys. Under the terms of the agreement, Coremetrics and BizRate will integrate their data capture technologies to combine BizRate's aggregate customer feedback from point-of-sale surveys with Coremetrics Online Analytics'™ LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) profiles. Utilizing Marketforce's award winning reporting and analytics infrastructure, this partnership offers retailers the first integrated system to measure the revenue impact of customer satisfaction initiatives.

"BizRate and Coremetrics are delivering ROI analysis that retailers have been sorely missing. At last, retailers will be able to find the sweet spot between their customers' satisfaction and revenue," said BizRate.com President and CEO Chuck Davis. "For example, we already know that an improvement in a customer satisfaction score from 5 to 10, translates into an increase of 80% in repurchase rates and over 80% increase in revenue. Therefore, retailers need to move customer satisfaction monitoring out of its silo and into the P&L agenda."

Coremetrics will receive filtered data feeds from BizRate.com that exclude any personally identifiable information. The Coremetrics Online Analytics BizRate-specific reports are designed to provide marketing analytics for aggregate online customer data only, protecting the integrity of BizRate.com's unbiased survey methodology.

About BizRate.com
Founded in 1996 and based in Los Angeles, BizRate.com (www.bizrate.com) is the leading comparison shopping site and e-commerce research firm on the Web. Consumers get the best deals at BizRate.com by comparing prices and store ratings, connecting millions of buyers to thousands of sellers in a single, organized location. Recently voted one of the "Top 100 Web Site's for 2001" by PC Magazine, BizRate.com's marketplace offers shoppers access to a powerful product search engine, standardized check-out, exclusive deals, "hot" product listings and gift guides to empower consumers to "shop smartly" across 20 popular store categories and more than 2,000 merchants. Through BizRate.com's unbiased consumer rating system, compiled exclusively from point-of-sale and fulfillment surveys of participating merchants, shoppers can compare merchants across 10 service dimensions. BizRate.com ratings appear on Consumer Reports Online and in Consumer Reports magazine.

About Coremetrics
Coremetrics is the leading web services provider of marketing analytics solutions, empowering companies to develop and act upon a comprehensive understanding of all visitor and customer interactions within their online channels. Coremetrics Online Analytics is the industry's only online marketing analytics platform that captures and stores all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) profiles that serve as the foundation for all successful marketing initiatives. Coremetrics Online Analytics enables online marketers, IT officers, and e-commerce executives to attract and convert high value visitors, optimize shopping path design, and increase customer lifetime value. Customers include The Columbia House Company, Grainger, GMAC Insurance, Hanover Direct, and Nortel Networks. Coremetrics is headquartered in Burlingame, California with research and development offices in Austin, Texas. The company is privately held with funding from Accel Partners, General Catalyst, and Highland Capital Partners. To learn more about Coremetrics, visit the company's Web site at www.coremetrics.com or call 877-721-CORE.

Coremetrics and Core Data Platform are trademarks of Coremetrics, Inc. Any other marks used in this document are trademarks or registered trademarks of the manufacturers or marketers of the products with which the marks are associated.