Contract renewal with Power NI

Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company")

Eckoh announces three-year contract renewal with Power NI

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of customer service solutions using speech recognition, is pleased to announce a three-year renewal of the contract with Power NI through its partner BT.

Power NI is the biggest electricity retailer in Northern Ireland, supplying almost 700,000 customers. Eckoh has been working with Power NI since 2005, providing PCI DSS compliant payment services that allow their post-pay customers to securely pay their bills and their pre-pay customers to purchase electricity in advance. Eckoh's initial service to Power NI was a speech recognition telephone solution; this service was extended to include a web-based solution in 2010 and a smartphone-based solution in 2011. 

Using Eckoh's service, pre-pay electricity customers are able to purchase electricity 24 hours a day. The service identifies customers through a unique meter ID detailed on their top-up card. The card authorisation and settlement is handled in real-time and issues the customer with a code, which can also be sent via SMS, to activate the purchased electricity.

"Eckoh's service really does make it easy for our customers to top-up their electricity; be that over the phone, on the web or via smartphone." said Graham Hunter from Power NI. "We are confident that the solutions they provide will continue to deliver the highest levels of customer service over the next three year period."

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh said: "We are delighted to be continuing our long-standing relationship with Power NI and it demonstrates the lasting value that our services deliver. Over the course of our partnership we have built up a multi-channel solution for Power NI that has successfully increased the number of their customers using our services year on year. We look forward to continuing to work closely with them and introducing further innovation over the course of the next three years."

Enquiries:

Eckoh plc

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director

www.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300

Buchanan

Jeremy Garcia, Nicola Cronk, Gabriella Clinkard Tel: 020 7466 5000

Singer Capital Markets

Shaun Dobson Tel: 020 3205 7500

Notes to Editors:

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading developer of speech recognition for customer contact centres.

Eckoh also provides complementary web, mobile and smartphone applications to its portfolio of blue chip clients.

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 clients' 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 Power NI

Power NI, part of the Viridian Group, is the biggest electricity retailer in Northern Ireland, supplying over 700,000 homes and over 40,000 farms and businesses. We strive to provide our customers with great value for money and the highest standards of customer service.

Last year we gave £9.6 million discount to our Keypad and Direct Debit customers. By offering advice, grants and special offers we help our customers to use less electricity and become more energy efficient in their homes and businesses.

We are committed to our environment and supply over 20,000 households with Eco Energy electricity, generated from 'renewable' energy sources.

For more information visit: www.powerni.co.uk/