eHNC Launches Quaan - An Intuitive Natural Language,Self-Help Search Engine for Customer Queries.

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2000

Corporate Search Technology Helps Excite@Home Deliver Fast, Accurate

Answers to Customer Questions and Improve Customer Service at Lower

Cost

eHNC Inc., a leading applications service provider (ASP) of e-commerce value-added

services and a subsidiary of HNC Software (Nasdaq:HNCS), today announced that it has launched Quaan, a new self-service solution that helps companies deliver fast and accurate answers to consumer questions, asked in natural language, via a company's corporate Web site.

Excite@Home (Nasdaq:ATHM) has successfully tested and deployed Quaan on its information page: http://www.excite.com/info/. Quaan is available immediately as a client/server application or an ASP solution.

"Quaan represents a further commitment to provide top-notch services to our Excite customers," said Lenny Alugas, V.P. Customer Care Development at Excite@Home. "It gives customers a vehicle to get the answers they're looking for without having to manually navigate several thousand help documents. Using this natural language query solution, we are able to confidently provide accurate answers to our customers' questions without requiring them to send us an e-mail message and wait for a reply."

Quaan, which means "interconnected" in Chinese, organizes a company's knowledgebase of support documents, FAQs and other Web site content so that customers can perform searches on the information quickly and easily-avoiding time-intensive, costly email inquires and phone calls.

"As the number of users on the Internet and consumer expectations continue to rise, it has become imperative for companies to find ways to more efficiently handle consumer requests and to reduce the strain on their customer service departments," said Mike Comiskey, senior analyst at Extraprise Advisors (www.extraprise.com). "eHNC's intelligent corporate search engine can give consumers the answers they are looking for, providing them with a better overall level of service while also alleviating some of the demands on company customer service."

Quaan lets users ask questions on a corporate Web site in plain English, instead of Boolean search strings or complex search language. Unlike other Web self-help products which require manually-intensive linking of answers to questions or keywords to find the right answer to a question, Quaan associates the meaning between words in queries or questions as well as words in knowledge bases using patented neural network technology. Quaan is able to handle extremely large volumes of data and respond to questions quickly and accurately. Quaan is especially skilled at answering questions about specialized or complex content that would require months for other corporate Q&A products to 'link'.

For example, when a user asks a question such as "How can I find help setting up an account?" they will receive an 'answer page' with links to the information that best answers the question. The look-and-feel of the 'answer page' is completely customizable to reflect the appearance of the corporate Web site.

According to a recent META Group report, IT help desks must deploy end-user self-support to effectively manage increasing support demands. META also projects that help-desk call volumes will increase 20% annually through 2003, growing from an average of 1.75 calls per end-user per month this year, to three calls per end-user per month by 2003. Given these estimates, META concluded that help desk managers must consider alternative strategies to better manage and reduce call volumes, including automated Web self-help solutions such as Quaan.

"Most manufacturing and service companies today list improved customer service and support among their top priorities," said Doug Burke, president of eHNC. "Quaan provides online organizations with the means to give great customer service by answering customers questions quickly and accurately, in a minimum of clicks."

Benefits of Quaan

--   Cuts customer support overhead by avoiding costly emails or phone
     calls;

--   Increases customer satisfaction by providing the right answer,
     right away, without requiring the customer to spend time
     searching through knowledgebases;

--   Understands natural language queries, and learns from these
     queries in order to adapt to each clients' specific 'vocabulary'
     of queries and content;

--   Easily implemented and available as a client/server application
     or an ASP solution; installs quickly, and new content can be
     added by customer service representatives (CSRs);

--   Scales to handle extremely large volumes of diverse content;

--   Supports international languages, including multi-byte languages,
     for greater global interconnectivity (Japanese, French and
     German). For more information about Quaan, visit
     http://www.quaan.com.

About Excite@Home

Excite@Home, the leader in broadband, offers media services through the Excite Network (www.excite.com, www.bluemountain.com and other properties), and broadband subscription services through @Home (www.home.com) and @Work (www.work.home.net). The company has a worldwide footprint of 72 million cable homes under long-term contract. Excite@Home's MatchLogic division (www.matchlogic.com) offers marketers industry-leading digital advertising capabilities including rich media production, ad and email services, and database analysis all integrated into a complete solutions package.

About eHNC

eHNC is a leading applications service provider (ASP) of e-commerce value-added services that boost sales and minimize risks through customer interaction management. Large eMerchants and merchant service providers (MSPs) use these next-generation services, empowering eMerchants to increase the profitability of their individual customer interactions in real-time before, during and after the sale. eHNC enables eMerchants to understand, manage, and forecast critical aspects of electronic interactions. eHNC's e-commerce services are based on proven, advanced technologies, and include comprehensive Internet risk management, intelligent targeted merchandising, and customer interaction management.

For more information about eHNC and its comprehensive, real-time e-commerce value-added services for merchants and merchant service providers, please contact Marc McKinnies 858/799-1436 or by email at mmckinnies@hncais.com or visit http://www.ehnc.com.

About HNC Software Inc.

Headquartered in San Diego, HNC Software Inc. (Nasdaq:HNCS) is a leading provider of predictive software solutions for the services industry, including financial, telecommunications, insurance and e-commerce. HNC's suite of predictive software solutions can provide real-time insight into customer relationships based on transaction-level data, helping business-to-consumer companies manage their relationships with individual customers. By accurately predicting customer behaviors, these companies can create initiatives to mitigate risk and attrition; improve customer service; develop marketing programs to enhance profitability, and detect fraudulent customer transactions. For more information visit HNC's Web site at http://www.hnc.com/ or contact Melinda Bateman, HNC Software Inc., 5935 Cornerstone Court West, San Diego, CA 92121, 858/799-3880. For the investor relations hotline, call 800/396-8052.

Note: Quaan is a trademark of eHNC Inc.