Whitbread Agreement

RNS Number : 1315M

Eckoh PLC

13 September 2012

 



For Immediate release

13 September 2012

Eckoh expands services with Whitbread with a new three year deal

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions, today announced that it has won a new three year contract with Whitbread plc, the UK's largest hotel and restaurant company, to provide a card payment solution for
Whitbread's Premier Inn Customer Contact Centre (CCC).

In December 2010, Eckoh secured a contract to provide an automated booking and payment service using advanced speech recognition to Whitbread's Premier Inn hotel chain and associated restaurants. This new agreement will build on the existing payment services by supplying Premier Inn with Eckoh's EckohPROTECT solution which is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). EckohPROTECT enables customers to provide card payment details to a contact centre agent securely over the phone without those details being heard or transferred into the contact centre environment. This enables organisations to more easily comply with PCI DSS as well as reducing the opportunity of fraud and providing a more reassuring process for their customers.

Eckoh will also be providing Premier Inn with EckohROUTE, which is an advanced call management service for Premier Inn's non-geographic phone numbers that will enable the efficient management of over 1500 numbers throughout the UK.

By using Eckoh as their PCI DSS compliant service provider, Whitbread will be able to implement a more cost effective solution whilst continuing to expand the booking and payment services within the Customer Contact Centre. The service is expected to start in April 2013.

Siobhan Fagan, Head Head of Customer and Business Systems at Whitbread, said, "We have been working with Eckoh for some time now and we're extremely happy with the service they provide. Following the successful implementation of the Premier Inn automated booking service the next phase was to enable our customers to make safe, secure payments over the phone with an agent. In addition, we wanted to improve the management of our non-geographic numbers to overcome the complexities of operating and reporting on such a large volume of inbound phone numbers. Eckoh brings a great deal of expertise in the complex area of PCI DSS compliance and network management and as a trusted supplier they were the natural choice for us."

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented: "Whitbread is a highly valued customer of Eckoh's and we are delighted that we are expanding our relationship with their adoption of our EckohPROTECT and EckohROUTE solutions. As we've seen with Whitbread there will be an increasing expectation for organisations to provide a secure payment environment, not only from a PCI DSS compliance perspective, but to maintain a high level of trust from the paying public when they disclose their personal card information. EckohPROTECT ensures that organisations can comply with these challenging security standards without compromising customer service and as a result we expect that the demand for this solution will only accelerate."

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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

About Whitbread PLC

Whitbread PLC is the UK's largest hotel and restaurant company operating market-leading businesses in the budget hotels and restaurant sectors. Its brands include Premier Inn, Beefeater, Table Table, Brewers Fayre, Taybarns and Costa Coffee.

Whitbread PLC employs over 40,000 people and serves 20 million customers every month in its 2,200 outlets across the UK. Whitbread PLC is a FTSE 100 company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. It is also a member of the FTSE4Good Index.

For more information, visit: www.whitbread.co.uk

About Premier Inn

Award-winning Premier Inn is the UK's largest and fastest-growing hotel brand with 600 budget hotels and more than 48,000 rooms across the UK and Ireland.  Premier Inn bedrooms feature en-suite bathroom, TV with Freeview, and WiFi internet access. Premier Inn offers customers a money-back 'Good Night Guarantee' of a good quality room, comfortable surroundings and friendly service, which is unique amongst Britain's leading hotel chains.

All Premier Inns feature a bar and restaurant; situated inside the hotel or adjacent, offering a wide range of food choices. Premier Inn was the first Britain-wide hotel group to sign up with national tourist board VisitBritain; this means Premier Inn is now part of a new quality assessment scheme, specially created for budget accommodation. 

For more information, visit: www.premierinn.com.

 

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