Last checked at 6 Sep 2010 07:00
6 September 2010
Eckoh plc
("Eckoh" or "the Company")
Eckoh wins contract with Utilita Group
Three-year contract for the provision of web card payment services to gas
and electricity provider
Eckoh, the UK's leading developer of speech recognition solutions for customer contact centres, is pleased to announce the award of a three-year contract, worth a minimum of £240,000 over the contract term, with Utilita Group.
Utilita is an independent UK company, licensed by Ofgem and Ofcom to supply gas and electricity, servicing some 15,000 customers and growing. Utilita is committed to helping households become energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions through the provision of smart meters, energy-efficient products and advice.
The contract is for the provision of real-time web card payment services, which is due to commence in September 2010. The service will allow Utilita customers to make payments for electricity and gas via the secure web card payment facility provided by EckohPAY. EckohPAY is one of the new productised offerings that Eckoh has recently developed.
Utilita customers that have pre-pay meters will be able to purchase electricity or gas using the EckohPAY web service. Customers will be pre-identified by the system through a unique meter ID detailed on their top-up card. The card authorisation and settlement will be handled in real-time and the customer will be issued with a code, which is sent via SMS directly to the meter to activate the purchased electricity or gas.
Bill Bullen, Managing Director and Founder of Utilita, commented: "We wanted to implement technology to enhance the service we provide to our customers. Eckoh's proven experience in our industry and customer-centric approach to their solutions provides us with every confidence that the service will prove very successful both for our customers and for Utilita."
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, added: "Eckoh is delighted to announce Utilita as a new client and another contract win for our EckohPAY product. Whilst we are best known for our speech recognition capability, Utilita have selected Eckoh to provide a web-only solution, which highlights our broad expertise and growing reputation in delivering self-service applications on the web and on the mobile as well as over the phone. We look forward to working with Utilita to implement this new service, which we believe will prove highly successful."
Ends
Enquiries
Eckoh
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer
Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director
www.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300
Corfin Public Relations
Harry Chathli, Claire Norbury Tel: 020 7596 2860
Seymour Pierce
Jonathan Wright Tel: 020 7107 8000
Notes to Editors:
About Eckoh
Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading developer of speech recognition and IVR solutions for customer contact centres.
Eckoh's sophisticated technology enables routine enquiries, transactions or payments to be processed without the need for the consumer to actually talk to an agent. This significantly reduces its client's operational costs, whilst freeing up agents to deal with more complex enquiries. Eckoh is the largest developer of such hosted services in the UK.
Eckoh's secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle over 650,000 calls an hour and up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, which means calls can always be answered no matter how unpredictable the circumstances.
For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com
About Utilita Group
Utilita is majority owned by one of the worlds largest smart meter manufactures (Secure Meters) and is leading the way in providing smart meter solutions in the domestic and commercial pre-payment market, lowering costs and providing vulnerable members of society and small business under increasing economic pressure with the ability to accurately monitor their energy use.
We are a small, independent company and are dedicated to giving excellent service with plain language and no fuss. We are fully licensed by Ofgem and Ofcom and have our own team to help you. We want to save you money and to save energy, with all the environmental benefits which that brings.
For more information, visit: www.utilita.co.uk