July 25, 2000

Soliloquy Boosts Acer Sales by 21%

Conversational Shopping Improves Customer Satisfaction and Increases Conversion Ratio from Browsers to Buyers

Soliloquy, Inc., a New-York-based e-commerce infrastructure company, and Acer, the world's third-largest PC manufacturer, today released the results of their five-month-long partnership.

Soliloquy's natural language understanding (NLU) technology has been providing notebook sales support on Acer's website (www.shopAcer.com) since February 2000. Notebook Expert™ has had a significant impact on Acer's notebook sales, boosting them by 21% over a five-month period. In addition, 29% of shoppers using Notebook Expert are clicking through to the Buy page, a significant click-through rate for an online retailer.

"Acer's outstanding results confirm our vision that NLU will become ubiquitous on the web because it provides a vastly enhanced user experience, as well as unparalleled real-time market intelligence," said Catherine Winchester, Founder and CEO of Soliloquy. "NLU and voice technology are on the verge of revolutionizing e-commerce."

Acer's online shoppers are able to hold iterative two-way dialogues with Notebook Expert using their own words (e.g. "I want a fast lightweight laptop for under $3,000'') while selecting the laptop that best meets their needs. It feels like chatting with a real person — only smarter.

With the addition of Soliloquy's Dialogue Mining™ services for contextually logging and statistically analyzing all conversations, vendors gain unprecedented insights into shopper psychology compared to simple clickstream analysis.

"We have learned so much about our customers since Soliloquy's Notebook Expert went live on our site five months ago,'' said Sumit Agnihotry, Manager of Web Projects for ShopAcer. "Now that people are asking for what they want in their own words, we can actually understand shopper desires for the first time.''

Kent Allen of Aberdeen Group agrees, "Natural language understanding and voice recognition are the future of the Internet and online shopping. Acer's results demonstrate that Soliloquy is very well positioned to be one of the drivers of this next generation of e-commerce.''

About Soliloquy

Founded by serial entrepreneur Catherine Winchester in New York in mid-1997, Soliloquy (http://www.soliloquy.com/) is at the forefront of the next generation web infrastructure and NLU technology. The company's product lineup includes Notebook Expert™, Desktop Expert™, Printer Expert™, Car Expert™, MutualFund Expert™, and House Expert™. Customers and partners include Hewlett-Packard, Acer, HardwareStreet, CNET Data Services and Net Perceptions. Soliloquy launched Version 2.0 of its core technology in May 2000. The first Expert went live on Acer's web site in February 2000 (http://www.shopAcer.com). Soliloquy's team of over 60 technology luminaries, including more than a dozen Ph.D.s from MIT, Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley, is led by CTO Mark Lucente, Ph.D.

Soliloquy products, built upon its proprietary natural language understanding (NLU) technology, are humanizing e-commerce by making the online shopping experience conversational. Shoppers can hold intelligent two-way dialogues with web sites by typing or speaking their own words. Communicating with Soliloquy's Experts feels like chatting with a live person — except that the Experts have a comprehensive knowledge of all products and are available 24/7 at a fraction of the cost.

About ShopAcer

ShopAcer, Acer America's e-commerce sales destination, sells Acer systems and TravelMate notebooks to the consumer market. Found on the Internet at (www.shopAcer.com), the site also features upgrades and additional accessories for Acer systems and TravelMate lines, as well as other software, accessories and peripherals to use with any system.

About Acer America

Established in 1976 as a subsidiary of the Acer Group, Acer America Corp. (AAC) designs, builds and markets client and server solutions for business professionals who require reliable, enhanced productivity and greater value of ownership. AAC's product offerings include desktops, notebooks, servers, thin clients, home PCs and Internet appliances. The Acer Group employs more than 34,000 people in 120 enterprises spanning 37 countries worldwide, and supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries. The Acer Group's revenue in 1998 was US $6.7 billion.