Utility Contract Wins

RNS Number : 8173J

Eckoh PLC

13 August 2012

 



PRESS RELEASE

13 August 2012

Eckoh extends market share within the Utility sector

Eighth UK Water Company to sign up for Eckoh's payment services

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions, today announced that it has won new three year contracts to provide the EckohPAY secure payment solution with a further two water utility companies.

When these two new services commence later in the year Eckoh will provide payment solutions to eight water companies in the UK, representing over 50% of the market and with a combined total of over 20 million customers. 

EckohPAY is a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS") compliant service that enables customers to make secure card payments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over the phone, web and mobile. When a customer wishes to pay their water and sewerage charges, it will validate them against their customer reference number, capture card details and handle card authorisation and settlement in real time. The EckohPAY service is a proven method to reduce the volume of repetitive calls to contact centre advisors while decreasing operational costs by up to 90%. In the last year Eckoh has processed over £117 million in payment transactions for our utility clients.

Water companies face a number of challenges including increased costs and prices, technology changes and emerging environmental and regulatory pressures. Eckoh delivers a user experience that exceeds expectations and helps to address Ofwat's DG9 customer satisfaction measures and dealing with incoming telephone traffic.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented: "Our water utility clients have benefited greatly from the adoption of EckohPAY.  Our secure, automated, self-service solution means customers do not have to give their card details to contact centre agents, which provides them with reassurance and security. It also allows them to pay their bill at any time, even if the contact centre is closed. Our solutions continue to generate significant new business interest from other utility providers and we remain optimistic about further increasing our market share."

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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, Nicola Cronk, Gabriella Clinkard                                                                              Tel: [phone]

Singer Capital Markets

Shaun Dobson                                                                                                                                         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

 

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