Equant wins top industry customer satisfaction award for uutstanding network security

Equant (NYSE: ENT) (Euronext Paris: EQU) has once again improved its overall performance in the latest Telemark customer satisfaction audit. Based on the customer satisfaction levels recorded by Telemark, Equant confirms its leading position as a world-class player and received an Outstanding rating for its network security.
Of all the key services provided by a communications company, network security and reliability are without doubt the most critical to the majority of multinational organisations, said Janet Watkin, director at Telemark. Therefore, it is a very significant achievement by Equant that its customers rated its network security offering as outstanding, because such a rating is a relatively rare accolade and represents an exceptional level of service.
This recognition reflects Equants strategy, announced earlier this year, to create a strong team dedicated to the delivery of communications support services to multinational corporations. The Telemark award adds to several successes in customer satisfaction, such as the Quality Connect first half 2004 survey, an in-depth survey of Equants key customers conducted by a third-party company, showing that the overall customer satisfaction increased during this period.
Over the last twelve months, Equant has invested in people and infrastructure to support the growth in demand for services that address the rise in network threats such as viruses, Distributed Denial of Service attacks or natural disasters. With 3,500 customer service personnel covering 220 countries and territories worldwide, Equant is the only global service provider that can invoke IP experts within a matter of minutes and dispatch field engineers within a matter of a few hours to resolve network problems, anywhere in the world.
Equant is constantly striving to improve its customer relationships and the Telemark report is invaluable to help benchmark the success of these efforts, said Alexandre Gouvea, senior vice president, Customer Care and Integration Services. Equant has always singled out its ability to deliver not only a global network, but also dedicated local support services in every corner of the world as a key differentiator. It is therefore very encouraging to see this is a view that is widely shared by our customers.
Equant has implemented a series of initiatives to increase further the level and efficiency of support offered by its global team, as follows:
Enhanced global customer services centers
Equant has invested in a network of five major global customer services centers covering all the worlds time zones: London, Rio de Janeiro, Atlanta, Sydney and Cairo. Announced in July, the expansion of the Cairo center reinforces further this network.
Customer relationship empowerment
All agents worldwide have access to real-time information about the customer and their network configuration, so they can solve network issues better and faster. Equant has also upgraded all its systems to enhance performance and reliability, reduce lead times and improve the quality of information.
In total, Equant will invest $12 million in 2004 in customer support.
Carrefour has worked with Equant for many years now. Over that time, we have come to rely not only on Equants secure and reliable global network, but also its highly skilled and responsive local support teams, said Carrefour IT Department.
This partnership is increasingly important to Carrefour as the multimedia services broadcast via Equants Multicast IPVPN solutions rank amongst the firms highest value products. Critically, Equants global network and customer support infrastructure is enabling the seamless roll-out of these new services to all corners of the world, including key emerging markets such as China and South America.
About Equant
Equant (NYSE: ENT) (Euronext Paris: EQU) is a recognised industry leader in global communications services for multinational businesses. Equant combines its network expertise including unmatched seamless network reach in 220 countries and territories and local support in approximately 165 countries with its expanded services capabilities to provide global, integrated and customised communication services to enable its customers key business processes. Equant serves thousands of the worlds top companies, with the industrys most extensive portfolio of communications services and network solutions, including the market-leading IP VPN used by nearly 1,300 global businesses. Equant, a subsidiary of France Telecom, was named Best Global Carrier 2003 and Best Managed Service 2003 at the World Communication Awards and consistently leads industry surveys in corporate user satisfaction.