Eckoh Technologies Regulatory News (ECK)

Eckoh PLC ("Eckoh")

Eckoh Signs Five-Year Contract with Ideal Shopping Direct to Extend Service Offering

Eckoh (AIM:ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, today announces that it has entered into a new five-year contract with Ideal Shopping Direct Ltd ("Ideal Shopping"), a leading multi-channel home shopping retailer in the UK and US. Ideal Shopping has been one of Eckoh's largest clients since 2005 and this significant contract represents the latest broadening of the scope of Eckoh's services. It will further underpin Eckoh's financial performance for the year ending 31 March 2016 and beyond.

Having first signed a contract for Eckoh's hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR") system in 2005, over the past decade the Eckoh solution for Ideal Shopping has evolved into a comprehensive, market-leading suite of customer contact services as well as incorporating Eckoh's secure payments offering. Through its solution Eckoh also manages the distribution of calls into Ideal Shopping's global network of contact centre operations based in the UK, India and the Philippines. In 2014 the Eckoh service was extended to encompass the newly established Ideal Shopping business in the US.

The new contract will see Eckoh extend this capability further by delivering an omni-channel solution across web, phone, email, social media and webchat channels. Delivery of the new solutions has already commenced and will be rolled out on a phased basis during the course of 2016.

The new contract follows the acquisition in September 2015 of Ideal Shopping by Blackstone, one of the world's leading investment companies, and will support its strategy to become an international omni-channel business.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented:

"As one of our longest standing and largest clients, I'm absolutely delighted to announce this significant new agreement with Ideal Shopping. We have been providing services to the business for over a decade and during that time both companies have evolved in size, market reach and offering. Operating in the same international markets, Ideal Shopping recognised Eckoh's ability to deliver a full omni-channel, self-service provision for its customers in the UK and US, and has entrusted us with this important part of its contact centre transformation.

We are seeing an increasing number of organisations recognise the benefits of integrating multi-channel self-service solutions with their live contact centres to provide a unified and comprehensive service to customers. We look forward to working with Ideal Shopping to assist it further in capitalising on the growth opportunities in omni-channel retailing in the UK and the US."

Ideal Shopping's Chief Operating Officer, Tony Sheridan, commented,

"Since 2005, Ideal Shopping has received exceptional service and support from Eckoh. Its impeccable track record, combined with the team's vision for future innovations, made it a natural choice for us to work with in this critical period of Ideal Shopping's development.

We have ambitious plans to transform the way we interact with customers and become a true omni-channel international business and we are excited to be strategically driving this through innovative, customer self-service, with Eckoh at the vanguard of this technology delivery."

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About Eckoh plc

Eckoh is a global provider of secure payment and customer contact solutions, working with organisations in over 10 countries around the world.

Our range of secure payment products removes customer card data from contact centres and IT environments. They are designed to help merchants reduce the risk of fraud and become compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). Eckoh's CallGuard product can be deployed on the customer's site or hosted in the Cloud. It allows contact centres to take card payments from customers without their agents seeing, hearing or accessing card data in any way. We have been a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider since 2010 and we currently process over $1 billion in card payments annually.

Eckoh's customer service solutions enable payments, transactions and enquiries to be processed without the caller needing to talk to a contact centre agent. This significantly reduces our clients' costs, whilst freeing up their agents to deal with more complex enquiries. These solutions are delivered over the phone, web and mobile devices. Eckoh is the largest provider of such hosted services in the UK.

For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com or www.eckoh.us