Allegiance, Inc., the premier provider of enterprise feedback management solutions, today announced that Extraco Corporation, the largest independent bank in Central Texas, has turned to the Allegiance Active Listening System to solidify their community-focused banking approach with excellent customer experiences. Allegiance provides Extraco with centrally located, Web-based solutions that facilitate the collection, management and analysis of customer feedback from the bank's more than 15 financial centers. The Allegiance system has helped to eliminate paper-based surveys, create an ongoing dialog with customers and resolve issues rapidly.

Prior to implementing the Allegiance system, Extraco used mystery shoppers to evaluate customer experiences and paper-based annual surveys to measure customer loyalty. However, with the growth of the company's Internet banking clientele, Extraco recognized the opportunity to get statistically significant responses via online surveys, as well as an opportunity to allow customers to submit feedback directly through the company's Web site. After evaluating third party-vendor solutions and an internal solution, Extraco determined the Allegiance MysteryShopper and ActiveSurvey solutions met the banks implementation, customization, accessibility and pricing requirements.

"Since our key mystery shopping aim was to simulate customer experience, we needed practical ways to measure true customer experience," said Cheryl Traudt, vice president and director of marketing for Extraco Banks. "Allegiance helps us to do that by providing a solution that is easy to implement, easy to categorize feedback at various levels, easy to assess results, and easy to modify for future use. Though we are early in the implementation, we're delighted with the online response rate, the immediate tabulation and summary report availability, and the fact that the feedback is direct from our customers. We have all of the control we desire, plus all of the support we need."

The Allegiance Active Listening System includes a suite of tools that are designed to enhance two-way communications between organizations and their customers and employees. The MysteryShopper tool allows Extraco to aggregate data from all customer responses in a single location, and organizes the reports for quick analysis and attention to problem areas. It also provides benchmark data for future performance comparisons. ActiveSurvey provides Extraco with an on-demand survey generation tool that can be used to gather feedback and gauge current attitudes of customers, employees and partners. The feedback and reports help Extraco's management make more informed, customer-focused business decisions, ultimately improving customer relationships while driving growth and lasting value.

"For more than 100 years, Extraco has been building its business through developing personal relationships with its customers," said Adam Edmunds, president and chief executive officer of Allegiance. "Our tools allow Extraco to better understand the needs of their customers via electronic means in a way that feels highly personal to them. In addition, The Allegiance ActiveSurvey and MysteryShopper tools have proven to be more effective and efficient than traditional paper-based tools driving an overall savings to the company. As a result, Extraco can redirect the saved resources and significant man-hours to other projects and continue to focus on what has made their business so successful: family-first, community-focused banking."

About Extraco Banks

Extraco Corporation celebrated 100 years and three generations of family management on July 12th, 2002. Founded as a cotton warehousing company, Extraco is the largest and most comprehensive independent financial institution headquartered in Central Texas with over $1 billion in assets, $90 million in capital, a loan limit of $13 million, over 75,000 customers and 470 employees. Extraco offers trust, insurance, brokerage, mortgage and technology solutions to complement its traditional bank product line. For more information about Extraco, visit www.extracobanks.com.

About Allegiance, Inc.

Allegiance is a leading provider of enterprise feedback management solutions. The company's Active Listening System is a suite of centrally managed feedback tools proven to help organizations capture, manage, analyze and respond to real-time feedback from multiple sources, ultimately impacting growth, profits and lasting value. The suite includes EmployeeVoice, CustomerVoice and PartnerVoice, advanced Web-based feedback solutions proven to help organizations better understand and react to the needs of employees, customers and partners; and SilentWhistle, an anonymous ethics reporting and whistle-blower solution proven to mitigate risk and fulfill compliance to Sarbanes-Oxley section 301. The Allegiance solutions help establish an ethical culture, build loyal relationships, and make more informed business decisions. For more information, please visit http://www.allegiance.com.

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