HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, England - (Business Wire) Eckoh plc, the UK
’s largest provider of hosted speech recognition services, has signed a three year multi-million pound contract with a global financial services company to provide an automated telephony self-service platform for handling customer enquiries across Europe.
The contract is forecast to start generating revenue by the fourth quarter of the current financial year, and to reach full run rate well in excess of £1 million per annum in the first half of the next financial year.
As stated in the preliminary results announcement on 4 August 2008, Eckoh have been working with BT to create a network which will allow calls to be delivered from all major European territories to Eckoh’s call processing platform in the UK. Through the agreement this client will be the first to utilise the new capability and it underlines Eckoh’s ability to now provide cost-effective hosting facilities on a pan-European basis to major global businesses.
Eckoh has commissioned a new, state-of-the-art VoiceXML platform for this network interactive voice response (“IVR”) solution. Calls routed from destinations across Europe to Eckoh’s hosted platform located at its UK data centres are expected to process in the range of 40 million minutes of traffic annually for this client alone.
Jim Hennigan, Executive Director, Eckoh added: “Whilst the UK has been the early adopter of hosted self-service, we are now seeing this trend developing across many European markets. Eckoh’s highly specialised heritage and our advanced technical ability to handle such large volumes of calls has enabled us to win multi-tenanted, multi-year deals here in the UK and place us in a strong position to successfully extend our offering into these new territories.”
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer, Eckoh commented: “We are delighted to have been selected by a client of global stature to support them throughout Europe. This is a landmark deal for Eckoh and to have deployed the first pan-European VoiceXML solution hosted centrally from the UK is a real affirmation of our technical expertise, putting us at the forefront of the self-service market. European expansion is a key part of our strategy and it is tremendous to spearhead that with such a significant contract.”
About Eckoh
Eckoh is the UK’s largest provider of hosted speech recognition services and sets the standard for outsourced automated solutions across Europe. Eckoh enables its clients to communicate more effectively and to enhance their profitability, while making life better for the people who use their services.
Eckoh provides automated services in virtually every industry sector for clients including TD Waterhouse, Vue Cinemas, William Hill, O2, Ideal Shopping Direct, DEFRA, The London Stock Exchange, the COI, National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide, BAA, Barclays Stockbrokers, United Utilities and ScottishPower.
Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large media owners and has amongst its clients Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper publisher, IPC, the leading consumer magazines group and Bauer, the largest privately owned publisher in Europe.
In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growing opportunity for speech recognition services in the corporate marketplace. The alliance, which was extended in July 2005 until 2010, has supplied speech services to over 25 clients. The combined strengths of both parties have created an unrivalled and value-added speech proposition and clients of the alliance include: National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide, Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Three Valleys Water.
Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over 650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognition technology making it one of the largest speech enabled call processing platforms in Europe.
In the financial year ending March 2008, Eckoh generated turnover of £25.6 million and had cash and short term investment balances of £6.8 million. Further information can be found at www.eckoh.com.
Eckoh plc
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer
Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director
Jim Hennigan, Executive Director
Tel: 01442 458 300
www.eckoh.com
or
Seymour Pierce Limited
Jonathan Wright
Tel: 020 7107 8000
or
Corfin Communications
Harry Chathli, Neil Thapar, Alexis Gore
Tel: 020 7977 0020
