NEW YORK, and ARLINGTON, VA - December 11, 2000 - PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) today announced an alliance aimed at helping businesses build more successful and trusted online customer relationships.

The alliance will leverage the substantial expertise, capabilities and resources of these two highly respected organizations, including PricewaterhouseCoopers' BetterWeb unit and the Council's BBBOnLine subsidiary. It will address several broadly recognized barriers to success online, including building trust and increasing the volume and reliability of customer transactions through a new approach to resolving customer problems online. The alliance is also initiating a series of efforts to provide insights, best practices, and enhanced capabilities to the online businesses community.

According to recent research, four of five online customers will encounter difficulty completing a transaction in the next 12 months. PricewaterhouseCoopers and the CBBB have designed a powerful new approach to Web-based problem resolution that will help consumers address these issues and businesses manage them proactively. It will provide:

• A simple means for customers to communicate, monitor, and resolve an issue before it becomes a complaint and potentially a dispute;
• A vehicle for businesses to proactively manage these customer contacts quickly and effectively, preserving goodwill, building loyalty, and improving productivity;
• A centralized system for businesses to track issues, record contact volume and evaluate the root cause, manage productivity in addressing customer issues, and address customer concerns across multiple locations;
• A platform for third-party dispute resolution providers that supports their involvement as needed.

The alliance will select one or more strategic development partners to develop and advance this breakthrough system and related services in the coming year. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) system, as one of the world's most experienced third-party consumer dispute resolution providers, will adopt this approach to manage its own large problem resolution caseload. The CBBB also plans to make the new technology and design available to trustmark organizations throughout the world with whom it expects to partner in the near future

The second major initiative of the alliance will be a series of workshops, executive business roundtables and an annual conference focused on helping businesses build successful online relationships. These include providing businesses with guidance and information about addressing customer concerns about security, privacy, problem resolution, online service, and reliability. The alliance also will conduct surveys and research about building more successful online relationships.

"PricewaterhouseCoopers' trusted global brand, industry knowledge and demonstrated e-business experience made it an ideal candidate for this alliance," said Charles Underhill, senior vice president of the CBBB and acting chief operating officer of BBBOnLine. "Combining PricewaterhouseCoopers' experience in online relationship management with the BBB's strength in dispute resolution and years of experience fostering ethical business practices -in both the traditional and online marketplace -- is bound to impact significantly the strength and satisfaction of e-commerce transactions."

"The Better Business Bureau is uniquely qualified to help the online business community establish effective mechanisms for responding to consumers' online problems," noted Maryann Murphy, partner and global leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers' BetterWeb. "Building online relationships by tackling key consumer concerns, such as privacy, security and customer care service issues are critical to success in the new economy," Murphy added. "Businesses that address customer concerns in a proactive manner will create a better environment for customers online and will ultimately turn more browsers into loyal customers."

About PricewaterhouseCoopers and BetterWebSM

BetterWebSM (www.betterweb.com) provides a suite of products and services to help online businesses improve performance, enhance customer loyalty, and reduce risk by building sustainable and profitable relationships with their customers. BetterWeb is a service of PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwcglobal.com), the world's largest professional services organization. Drawing on the knowledge and skills of more than 150,000 people in 150 countries, the organization helps its clients solve complex business problems and measurably enhance their ability to build value, manage risk and improve performance in an Internet-enabled world.

PricewaterhouseCoopers refers to the member firms of the worldwide PricewaterhouseCoopers organization.

About the Council of Better Business Bureaus and BBBOnLine

The Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) has more than 300 leading-edge national corporate members and serves as the umbrella organization (www.bbb.org) for the 145 Better Business Bureaus in the United States and Canada, which in turn are supported by 300,000 business members throughout North America. The first BBB was founded in 1912, and the network of BBBs has grown to become the most recognized advocate for promoting ethical business and advertising practices, providing more than 23 million instances of service to consumers and businesses each year. The BBB system is dedicated to fostering fair and honest relationships between businesses and consumers, instilling consumer confidence and contributing to an ethical business environment, in both the traditional and online marketplaces. Founded in 1997, BBBOnLine (www.bbbonline.org) is a program of the BBB system that helps consumers identify online merchants that meet BBB standards through its reliability and privacy "trustmark" programs, and the BBB Code of Online Business Practices. Nearly 10,000 web sites have qualified to display one or both of the BBBOnLine trustmarks.