Ideal Shopping Direct contract

RNS Number : 4071V

Eckoh PLC

14 January 2013

 



For Immediate Release                                                                                       January 14 2013

Eckoh PLC

("Eckoh")

Eckoh extends Ideal Shopping Direct contract

Eckoh (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions, today announces it has extended its contract with Ideal Shopping Direct Limited ("ISD"), one of the UK's leading multi-channel home shopping retailers, for the provision of advanced speech solutions for product ordering and customer service.

Eckoh have worked with ISD since 2005 and they are one of Eckoh's largest clients generating over 15 million minutes of call traffic in 2012. The extended contract will run until at least January 2015, and secures a significant amount of revenue for Eckoh going forwards.

ISD sells its products to consumers via the internet and its four television shopping channels, Ideal World, Ideal Extra, Create and Craft and the Deal Channel, which are broadcast to 24 million UK households.

Eckoh currently provides a solution which enables customers to place orders entirely through an automated system and then to track an order through the delivery process or to speak to a live advisor as required. As part of the agreement Eckoh will be re-developing and migrating the product ordering and customer service solutions to operate on their newer VoiceXML hosting platform.

Nik Philpot, Eckoh's Chief Executive Officer commented:  "We're very excited to be continuing our long standing relationship with Ideal Shopping. This is a significant renewal for our business and further endorses our market leading position. The re-design of their services will provide the opportunity to consolidate on our experience of working with them over the last 8 years as well as incorporating their vision for the future business, enabling us to deliver an even more reliable, convenient and trustworthy service to their customers."

Mike Hancox, ISD's Chief Executive Officer said: "Eckoh has proven over many years to be an extremely capable and reliable partner, consistently delivering the highest quality automated solutions. When you combine this with their innovative and flexible approach to our business, it made our decision to extend our relationship with them an easy one, and we look forward to working with them to create new services that will support us in the future growth of our business."

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For more information, please contact:

Eckoh plc

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director

www.eckoh.com                                                                                                   Tel: [phone]

Buchanan          

Jeremy Garcia, Gabriella Clinkard                                                                          Tel: [phone]

N+1 Singer

Shaun Dobson, Matt Thomas                                                                                Tel: [phone]

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions across voice, web and mobile channels. We are a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider, currently processing over £250 million in card payments annually.

Eckoh's 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. Eckoh is the largest provider of such hosted services in the UK.

Our secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle  up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, which means that calls will always be answered no matter how unpredictable the circumstances.

For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com

About Ideal Shopping Direct

Ideal Shopping Direct Limited is a leading digital retailer, selling products to consumers via its television shopping channels and the internet. We operate four television shopping channels:

Ideal World is our flagship channel which brings you a department store filled with fantastic brands. Available on Freeview, Sky Digital, Freesat and Virgin, Ideal World is live 17 hours a day.

Ideal Extra brings you more hours of gardening, home, kitchen and technology, as well as craft and the best of our Ideal World shows. Available on Sky and Freesat.

Create and Craft provides specialist craft and hobby products. Available on Sky, Freeview and Freesat, Create and Craft is live 12 hours a day.

The Deal Channel is your one-stop-shop for top brands at great prices. Offering products for you, your family, your home and your lifestyle, The Deal Channel is available on Sky, Freeview and Freesat.

We broadcast to more than 23 million households in the UK; each channel is supported by a transactional website which also streams the TV broadcast. The television shopping market in the UK has grown dramatically in recent years as digital TV has spread. By 2012 all UK households will have access to digital TV, and hence to television shopping.

Our subsidiary company, Ideal Sourcing Ltd, supplies major UK retailers and wholesalers with craft and related products. We recently acquired 'Lead the Good Life' which operates an on-line and mail order gardening business under the Lead The Good Life brand, along with mydoodle, the online platform for creativity and Deramores, the UK's leading online retailer of knitting supplies. We currently employ more than 500 people, mainly at our broadcasting and distribution site in Peterborough, UK.

 

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