Eckoh appointed by NIE Energy

RNS Number : 8781H

Eckoh PLC

06 June 2011

 



For Immediate Release

6 June 2011

Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company")

Eckoh appointed by NIE Energy to develop smartphone application

 

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of customer service solutions using speech recognition, is delighted to announce it has been appointed by NIE Energy to develop a smartphone application. The smartphone application will enable customers to purchase electricity via their smartphone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Through the EckohPAY product, which processes PCI DSS compliant card payments, NIE Energy's customers can already purchase electricity using the phone and web, and by the end of June via a smartphone application.

NIE Energy is the biggest electricity retailer in Northern Ireland, supplying over 760,000 customers. Eckoh has been working with NIE Energy since 2005 initially delivering a telephone based solution using speech recognition.  In 2007 this service was extended to include a web-based solution and the service has now been further extended to include the provision of smartphone-based solutions.

Research commissioned by NIE Energy showed 99% of its respondents to be interested in making payments using a smartphone application. Eckoh's smartphone application will identify customers through a unique meter ID detailed on a top-up card. The payment card authorisation and settlement will be handled in real-time and the customer will be issued with a code to activate the purchased electricity. The customer will have the option to create a quick pay account, which will store their details securely, making future top-ups even faster.

Ralph Graham of NIE Energy commented: "We have been working with Eckoh to develop a multi-channel payment model for our customers, which includes a telephone, web and soon a smartphone payment service. From the end of June, this smartphone application will enable us to offer our customers yet another way to purchase discounted electricity for their 'pay as you go' Keypad and is designed to make the process even easier for our customers. We look forward to completing this smartphone application with Eckoh over the coming weeks and to it providing our customers with the highest standards of customer service."

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh said: "We are delighted to announce the development of this smartphone application, which complements our existing phone and web solutions for NIE Energy, and this agreement is evidence of our multi-channel capabilities. Our ability to deliver solutions across multiple channels enables organisations to reduce the number of suppliers that they work with and deliver a more comprehensive and convenient customer experience. We believe this broadening of our proposition will be welcomed by our clients and we expect to see revenues increasing from these complementary sales."

Enquiries:

Eckoh plc Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director www.eckoh.com	Tel: [phone]
Buchanan Jeremy Garcia, Christian Goodbody, Gabriella Clinkard	Tel: [phone]
Singer Capital Markets Shaun Dobson	Tel: [phone]

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 NIE Energy Limited

NIE Energy, 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.nieenergy.co.uk

 

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