3rd Oct 2005 11:30
Eckoh Technologies PLC03 October 2005 For Immediate Release 3 October 2005 ECKOH TECHNOLOGIES PLC "Journey Finder" wins "Product of the Year 2005" at European Call Centre Awards "Journey Finder", the pioneering new speech based technology, developed by BTand Eckoh Technologies, has been voted "Product of the Year 2005" at this year'sEuropean Call Centre Awards. The award winning technology allows customers, to use speech recognition toobtain real-time information on direct train times for all train operatingcompanies. The innovative technology behind Journey Finder could be tailored andapplied to any travel service where a customer is seeking arrival and departuretimes from a particular station (whether it be train, bus, taxi or evenairport). Journey Finder was originally developed by BT/Eckoh to support the existingNational Rail Enquiries telephone service during busy periods. The new service,advertised as TrainTrackerTM (0871 200 4950), enables customers to request liverunning information for a direct train service by simply asking for theinformation they require. TrainTrackerTM has already been highly successful forNational Rail Enquiries, with the service handling close to two million callssince it's official launch in January 05. Other award winning features associated with BT/Eckoh's new Journey Finderproduct, includes the technology's ability to "learn" a caller's travel habitsover time; for instance a rail customer calling in the evening willautomatically be offered the return journey they requested that morning. Thismakes the service a lot faster and easier to use. Furthermore with "Journey Finder", BT and Eckoh have successfully overcome oneof the most significant issues associated with speech based informationservices, by creating a solution to cater for stations with the same name (e.gNewport in Gwent and Newport in Essex) or stations with similar sounding names(Aberdare and Aberdour). "Journey Finder" also boasts the capability to default to touchtone IVRfunctionality if the caller is in a noisy environment. Jim Hennigan, managing director, Eckoh Speech Solutions division, comments: "Weare delighted to receive this fantastic award. The technology behind JourneyFinder is truly innovative and unique and it can be easily adapted andcustomised for all sorts of clients in the travel sector who are seeking tocompetitively differentiate and extend their customer service offering."Chris Pike, head of BT's CRM Practice, comments: "This is a tremendous tributeand acknowledgement of BT and Eckoh's achievement in the development of highlyadvanced speech recognition applications in the travel sector. Journey Finder isa winning example of how a highly sophisticated self-service speech solution candeliver outstanding customer service and operational results from both a clientand an end user perspective."He continues, "Journey Finder has enabled BT to provide an holistic,multi-channel approach to the management of National Rail Enquiries, which wemanage on behalf of ATOC." -Ends- For further enquiries, please contact Eckoh Technologies plc Tel: 08701 100 700Nik Philpot, Chief Operating OfficerMartin Turner, Chief Executive OfficerAdam Moloney, Finance Director Buchanan Communications Tel: 020 7466 5000Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia Notes to Editors About Eckoh Technologies:Eckoh Technologies plc designs, builds, hosts and manages speech solutions forlarge corporations and organisations using ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) andIVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies. It is a leading UK serviceprovider and infrastructure owner/operator and continues to exploit thesignificant growth in demand for speech solutions across Europe. In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growingopportunity for speech technology in the corporate marketplace. Since 2003, bothparties have combined their core competencies to create an unparalleled customerservice offering in the provision of hosted speech solutions. The relationship with BT empowers Eckoh to leverage BT's world class IntelligentNetwork capability, their CRM expertise and their broader telephony serviceoffering whilst BT benefits from Eckoh's leading market expertise and technicalskill-set in the design and application of hosted speech solutions.The combined strengths of both parties have created an unrivalled andvalue-added speech proposition and clients of the alliance include: BarclaysStockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, UGC Cinemas, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, NationalRail Enquiries and Three Valleys Water. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over500,000 calls an hour) of which over 6,500 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology, making it the largest speech enabled call processing platform inEurope. In the year to 31 March 2005 Eckoh Technologies plc generated a turnover of£79.7 million and had a cash balance of £13.3m. Further information can be foundat www.eckoh.com. 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