CKSW (MM)

BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CKSW), the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for the services industry, today announces tight integration between Facebook and its ClickContact self-service customer portal – helping service businesses deliver a high-value customer relationship online.

With this social media extension of ClickContact, customers can book and change service appointments directly on a service organization's Facebook page, receive reminders and notifications on the expected arrival time of the service engineer to minimize wait times – and reduce the chance that the service engineer will not find the customer at home.

"The most successful service businesses tightly link the human experience with the social web," said Simon Morris, Vice President of Marketing at ClickSoftware. "Our social media extension integrates the ultimate customer touch point – the service call – with Facebook's 500 million active users, triggering the word-of-mouth engine."

A key part of ClickSoftware's Service Optimization suite of software, ClickContact allows a customer to book – and easily reschedule – a service appointment for themselves, without the intervention of any of the organization's customer support staff. This self-service approach empowers customers to get what they need faster, and dramatically reduces call center volume for compounding cost savings to the service organization.

"Over the past year, we have used Facebook to educate and service our customers, learn from them and collaborate with them on community projects. We have significantly grown our Facebook community and experienced its powerful business influence," said Josh Houser, Vice President of Service of APX Alarm, the ClickSoftware customer that helped drive the ClickContact social media extension. "We are looking forward to enriching our customer's Facebook experience with the appointment booking and self-service portal. Extending service management to our Facebook presence is a natural extension to the community we've created."

"Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools are the channels consumers actively use to broadcast their experiences - both positive and negative - with service providers. With this ClickContact extension into Facebook, service providers can activate this powerful broadcast engine to communicate the positive experiences they create through engineer appointments and notifications," added Mr. Morris.

Facebook becomes yet another interaction channel for ClickContact, which can also integrate two-way communication with company web pages, automated voice calls, e-mail and SMS. Customer may select their preferred channels of communication at any time, even for the same service incident.

To see ClickContact in action on Facebook, watch a brief video demo: http://bit.ly/a4Cr9I

About ClickSoftware

ClickSoftware is the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business. Our portfolio of solutions, available on demand and on premise, create business value through higher levels of productivity, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Our patented concept of 'continuous planning and scheduling' incorporates customer demand forecasting, long and short term capacity planning, shift planning, real-time scheduling, mobility and location-based services, as well as on-going communication with the consumer on the expected arrival time of the service resource.

As the pioneers of the 'W6' concept more than 20 years ago, we have perfected solutions for solving a wide variety of problems on Who does What, for Whom, with What, Where and When. The combination of proven technology with educational services helps businesses find the right balance between reducing costs, increasing customer satisfaction, employee preferences and industry regulations/legislation. ClickSoftware's solutions manage over 200,000 resources in service businesses across a variety of industries and geographies. Our flexible deployment approach, breadth and depth of solutions and strong partnerships with leading CRM/ERP vendors and system integrators makes us the number one choice to deliver superb business performance to any organization. The company is headquartered in the United States and Israel, with offices across Europe, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit http://www.clicksoftware.com . Follow us on Twitter.

SOURCE ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd.