Press Release

Vocal Laboratories Report on Customer Care Among Financial Institutions Shows Washington Mutual on Top

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 19, 2005--Vocal Laboratories Inc. (www.vocalabs.com) today announced the results of its SectorPulse study on the quality of customer service among three financial services companies.

This study focused on Washington Mutual (NYSE:WM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and the Internet funds transfer company PayPal, a subsidiary of e-Bay (NASDAQ:EBAY).

Washington Mutual showed substantial improvement from an earlier study published in April 2005, earning an "A" grade in Caller Satisfaction, up from a "C". But the company earned a "D" in Call Completion, which measures the percentage of customers who were able to complete their business with just a single phone call.

Bank of America was also evaluated in the previous report, and showed no significant change earning a "C" in Caller Satisfaction, and a "D" in Call Completion, just as before.

While not a direct competitor to the other two companies, PayPal processes millions of online financial transactions each year. We did not collect data on PayPal in our prior study, but for this report the company earned a "C" in Customer Satisfaction and a "D" in Call Completion.

VocaLabs CEO Peter Leppik comments: "The poor grades for Call Completion are especially troubling in this industry. Repeat calls to complete a single piece of business frustrates customers and negatively impacts the financial performance of a customer service operation. Across all the financial services companies for which we have data, about one customer in four must call more than once, an unnecessary burden on both the customer and the company."

To learn more, visit www.vocalabs.com. An Executive Summary and complete SectorPulse-Financial data reports are available by subscription. Contact Rick Rappe' at rrappe@vocalabs.com

About SectorPulse

VocaLabs' SectorPulse reports compare the customer service quality for different companies in the same industry, using data and call recordings from the companies' customers.

VocaLabs has recruited over 92,000 individuals to provide feedback on customer service experiences, from which we drew the participants for this study. VocaLabs panelists who are customers of one of the companies included in this study were asked to participate by having their customer service calls tracked and completing surveys before and after the call.

About Vocal Laboratories

Vocal Laboratories delivers statistically reliable feedback on the user friendliness of telephone based customer service whether delivered via traditional call centers or self-serve technology. Clients are end user enterprises, call center consultants, application providers and equipment vendors. Only VocaLabs has the unique methodology to evaluate a customer contact application at any stage of development from prototype through existing services quickly, cost effectively and with maximum accuracy.

Contacts

Vocal Laboratories, Inc., Eden Prairie
Rick Rappe', 952-941-6580 X 205
rrappe@vocalabs.com
www.vocalabs.com