Cisco Earns J.D. Power and Associates Certification for Second Consecutive Year

SAN JOSE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- May 2, 2007 -- Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO), the first global networking company to earn certification under the J.D. Power and Associates Certified Technology Service & Support Program(SM), announced that it has been re-certified. This distinction recognizes Cisco for delivering "An Outstanding Customer Service Experience" and demonstrates the company's global commitment to enabling customer success with Cisco technology.

"An excellent customer experience is what motivates us here at Cisco," said Joe Pinto, senior vice president, technical services for Cisco. "Our ultimate goal is customer success, and we are proud to have earned this certification for the second year in a row. The certification process was much more rigorous this year and demonstrates our focus on making ongoing investments to continually improve our quality of service."

The Certified Technology Service and Support program was jointly developed by J.D. Power and Associates and the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) in 2006 to evaluate overall customer satisfaction and help technology support organizations increase their effectiveness in customer service. The certification must be renewed each year in order to maintain status as a J.D. Power and Associates certified center. The certification criteria were revised through interviews with more than 50 industry experts. While the first version of the certification defined the standard, the second version created an even more rigorous program that comprised 290 criteria, a 20 percent increase. Fifty separate metrics for key support performance indicators were added, and companies must exceed an industry benchmark that is based on the results of more than 150 companies earning certification points.

"Fifty percent of consumers rank quality of service as a top-three purchase criterion, and 81 percent of IT buyers in an SSPA study say they agree that certifying support quality is a competitive advantage for a vendor," said J.B. Wood, CEO and president of SSPA. "With service excellence being such a critical purchasing factor, companies must demonstrate their commitment to support services; Cisco is the first global networking company to demonstrate this kind of focus."

To merit the certification, Cisco had to rank in the top 20 percent of the industry, as determined by J.D. Power and Associates' extensive technology industry benchmark customer satisfaction research, and it had to pass a comprehensive global audit of Cisco's Technical Support Services. Exceptional service operations had to show alignment to customer needs and be independently validated by feedback directly from Cisco customers who had used Cisco support services. For information regarding Cisco services please visit: www.cisco.com/go/services.

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