Burlington, Mass. – November 3, 2005 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT), formerly ScanSoft, Inc., today announced the winners of its annual Best Practices Competition, awarded at its annual conference, Conversations 2005. Now in its sixth year, the Nuance® Best Practices Competition recognizes companies whose speech solutions improve customer satisfaction, overall caller experience and provide measurable results. This year’s winners include: Aetna, for Value & Differentiation, AOL for Customer Experience, PG&E for Industry Innovation and Qwest for Brand Promise.

The Best Practices Competition is open to all Nuance customers and its partners' customers. Participating applicants submit comprehensive case studies that outline the decision-making process and implementation of its speech project, and highlight tangible results of the application. Companies vying for the Best Practices award must meet superior operational efficiencies as well as noticeable customer retention and satisfaction goals. Aetna: Delivering Value through Differentiation, Innovation and Integration

A 2003 Best Practices winner, Aetna continues to raise the bar for customer self-service with its Aetna Voice Advantage (AVA) speech-enabled integrated voice response (IVR) system. Launched in 2003, AVA handles more than 4.5 million inbound calls each month from members and health care professionals. Aetna has consistently demonstrated a commitment to providing high-quality customer self-service to its constituents in the way each individual prefers – by using its websites, such as Aetna Navigator™ for members, through its speech-enabled IVR application, or by speaking to a customer representative.

With AVA, Aetna offers personalized menus and 21 self-service options for health care professionals and plan members. For those who need additional assistance, AVA uses intelligent call routing to ensure callers are directed to a customer service representative who specializes in the member’s plan or to a dedicated provider service center representative.

Aetna uses customer feedback and research, including focus groups with Aetna members, to regularly enhance the capabilities and usability of its self-service tools. Aetna’s enhancements to AVA as well as online self-service initiatives and targeted marketing campaigns contributed to a 9 percent reduction of calls requiring assistance by a representative from 2003 to 2004.

Expanding Customer Experience at AOL

America Online, Inc. deployed speech as part of an effort to provide its online users with access to information over any medium, including the telephone. As part of this initiative, the company launched an initiative that provided its members with a host of customer self-service functions, including registration, billing support, tech support and cancellations. Leveraging advanced speech capabilities, the solution also more effectively identifies who the member is and why they are calling to help live consultants serve the member more efficiently. With an expected 85% success rate by December 2005, the application has exceeded the company’s expectations. With more applications planned, the company has already achieved an enviable 150% return on investment with Nuance speech solutions.

Leading the Utilities Industry at PG&E

At PG&E, customer service and satisfaction was first on the company’s mind as it looked to build a speech solution to serve more than 15 million utility customers each year. Working with Nuance and Nortel, the company built a first-rate speech solution that automates a variety of caller’s needs, including billing, outage reports, start/stop of service and general inquiries.

Speech enabled the company to fully automate several functions which were impossible to manage using traditional touch-tone applications, including stop/start/transfer service where gathering customers’ address information is critical. In addition, text-to-speech technology enables the company to provide dynamic information such as the location of pay stations, outage information and more to its more than 14 million customers. The application has been so successful that automation rates have improved by as much as 15% in some functions of the system since its implementation – significantly higher than the company’s desired expectations of 5-9%.

Enhancing the Brand at Qwest

Qwest receives more than 30 million calls each year from its customers. Each call represents a new opportunity to shape and reinforce the image of Qwest, so it was important that the company develop a speech system that helped to positively represent the company’s image and brand. Leveraging Nuance’s Voice Identity Program TM, the company embarked on a journey to develop a persona that reflected the company’s image with one unique challenge: Qwest company policy required that all voices of the company be either employees or customers of Qwest. After a thorough search of more than 47,000 employees and customers, Qwest found Dustin, a native of Phoenix and a customer of Qwest whose voice was consistently ranked highest in extensive surveys with Qwest customers, prospects and employees.

Today, the voice of Dustin is used in all of Qwest’s voice-based transactions, and garners consistently positive feedback from all of those who interact with him. Customers and employees alike have praised his “friendliness,” “spirit,” and noted that he “knows what he’s doing.” In fact, Dustin is so popular that he prompted at least one listener to inquire, “Is he married?”

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance (Nasdaq: SSFT) is the leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance's proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com

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