18th Jun 2007 07:01
Eckoh PLC18 June 2007 Eckoh and Twenty First Century Communications win three-year contract with United Utilities for advanced power outage communications solution United Utilities, one of the UK's leading providers of electricity services, hasselected Eckoh plc ("Eckoh") and Twenty First Century Communications, Inc.("TFCC"), for the delivery of an automated call handling solution to providecustomers with around-the-clock information and service updates in the event ofa power outage. Eckoh, the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services, has anexclusive alliance with TFCC to deliver power outage communications solutionsfor utilities organisations across the UK. This is the fourth substantive dealfor the Eckoh and TFCC partnership, which when United Utilities is added willcover over 6.5 million of the UK's 30 million electricity meters. The United Utilities solution will be underpinned by TFCC's industry-leadingHigh Volume Call Answering service (HVCA(R)), which incorporates advanced speechrecognition technology from Eckoh. The service, which has been customised andconsistently refined for the UK market over the past three years, will givecustomers the ability to inform United Utilities when they are experiencing apower outage and to receive restoration updates on a 24/7 basis. Thanks to Eckoh's advanced speech recognition technology, the service willprovide callers with location specific restoration updates, by capturing thecaller's spoken post code, address and entered telephone number. Other provenfeatures of the service include an innovative call back capability, designed toconfirm with customers when power has been restored in their local area. All calls to the service will be hosted on Eckoh's highly scaleable self-serviceplatform, which has the capability of handling 650,000 calls an hour and 8,000calls concurrently. The vast scalability of Eckoh's platform gives UnitedUtilities the critical reassurance they need to manage the unpredictable volumeof calls received, even during severe power outage periods. Sally Ainsworth, Electricity Business Customer Services Manager, UnitedUtilities commented: "By leveraging TFCC and Eckoh's proven track record and highly specialisedexpertise, we look forward to setting our customer service bar even higher andto driving home real business innovation and operational benefits to ourorganisation as a whole." Jim Hennigan, Executive Director, Eckoh said:"We are delighted to win this significant contract with one of the UK's leadingutilities companies. I believe that our repeat business success is furthertestament to the utility industry's growing appetite for telephone-basedself-service solutions that have the ability to provide a 24/7 level oftelephone service that customers have come to appreciate and to simply expect." Tom Calabro, Senior Vice President, TFCC, added: "Eckoh has been an ideal partner to work with as we continue to attract and retain important large UK clients for our portfolio of highly specialised proven services. United Utilities has impressed us with its commitment to adopt best practices and we greatly appreciate the opportunity to work with them to deliver ongoing improvements in service to its customers." Eckoh estimates that the market for automated speech solutions within the UKutilities industry will be worth around £3m in 2008, and will grow at a CAGR ofbetween 25 and 30% between now and the end of the decade. For further enquiries, please contact: Eckoh plcNik Philpot, Chief Executive OfficerAdam Moloney, Group Finance DirectorJim Hennigan, Executive Directorwww.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300 Corfin CommunicationsHarry Chathli, Neil Thapar, Ben Hunt Tel: 020 7929 8989 Seymour PierceJonathan Wright Tel: 020 7107 8050 About Eckoh Eckoh is the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services. Eckohenables its clients to communicate more effectively and to enhance theirprofitability, whilst making life better for the people who use their services. Eckoh provides automated services in virtually every industry sector for clientsincluding Vue Cinemas, William Hill, O2, Ideal Shopping Direct, DEFRA, TheLondon Stock Exchange, National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, BSkyB,Parcelforce Worldwide, BAA, Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, UnitedUtilities, Scottish Power and NIE (Northern Ireland Electricity). Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large mediaowners and has amongst its clients ITV, the UK's largest commercial broadcaster,Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper publisher and IPC, the leading consumermagazines group. In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growingopportunity for speech recognition services in the corporate marketplace. Thealliance, which was extended in July 2005 until 2010, has supplied speechservices to over 25 clients generating more than 55 million minutes of speechself-service transactions. The combined strengths of both parties have createdan unrivalled and value-added speech proposition and clients of the allianceinclude: National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide,Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and ThreeValleys Water. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology making it one of the largest speech enabled call processing platformsin Europe. In the year to 31 March 2007 Eckoh generated a turnover of £103 million with anadjusted PBT of £2m and had cash balances of £9.6m. Further information can befound at www.eckoh.com. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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