Classmates.com 2009 Annual Report Download - page 20

Table of Contents
We utilize a combination of third-party and internally-developed software applications for customer billing. Customer billing is a complex
process and our billing systems must efficiently interface with third parties' systems, such as our credit card, ACH and telephone bill processors'
systems. Our ability to accurately and efficiently bill and collect payment from our members and customers is dependent on the successful
operation of our billing systems and various third-
party processors. In addition, our ability to offer new pay services or alternative payment plans
is dependent on our ability to customize our billing systems.
Customer Support and Retention
We believe reliable customer service and technical support are important to retaining our customers. Our businesses generally offer a
variety of online and offline tools designed to provide solutions and answers to frequently asked questions. These tools are also designed to assist
our members and customers in verifying and updating their account information. In addition, we offer traditional email support and certain of our
services provide live telephone support as well.
Our customer relationship management and support infrastructure includes employees at our facilities in Woodland Hills, California;
Hyderabad, India; Fort Lee, New Jersey; Seattle, Washington; San Francisco, California; Downers Grove, Illinois; Centerbrook, Connecticut;
Medford, Oregon; Sherwood, Arkansas; Sleaford, England; and Nottingham, England. We also outsource to a third party substantially all of our
telephone customer support and some of our email customer support for our Classmates Media and Communications services, and some of our
telephone customer support for FTD. We monitor the effectiveness of our customer support functions and measure performance metrics such as
average hold time and first call resolution and abandonment rates. Communications with our customers are logged and categorized to enable us
to recognize and act on trends. An internal quality assurance team monitors the performance of our customer support vendor and provides
feedback to improve their skills and establish consistency throughout our customer support functions.
Technology
Each of our services, including our floral network services, our online social networking services, our Internet access services and our
online loyalty marketing services, operates on a separate and distinct technology platform. Each of our services is generally provided through a
combination of internally-developed and third-party software, industry standard hardware and outsourced network services. We have internally-
developed order processing, order fulfillment and customer service systems which provide communication to our floral network members and
third-party suppliers. We also have developed software to enhance the functionality of certain components of our services, including
connectivity, Web services, billing, email, customer support, customer loyalty applications, and targeted advertising. We maintain data centers in
multiple locations in the U.S. and Europe. In some cases, we have redundant systems to provide high levels of service availability and
connectivity. We host or outsource the majority of our data center services in third-party co-location facilities and we outsource all of our
bandwidth and managed modem services.
We license from third parties a number of our software applications and components, including applications for our billing, customer
support, advertising, and database systems, our client and server applications, and portions of our dial-up Internet access accelerator services.
These licenses generally have terms ranging from several years to perpetual.
Government Regulations
We are subject to a number of international, federal, state, and local laws and regulations, including, without limitation, those relating to
taxation, bulk email or "spam," advertising, user privacy, data protection, and consumer protection. In addition, proposed laws and regulations
relating to the
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