Eckoh, a developer of speech recognition solutions for customer contact centers, expanded its three-year contract with Utilita Group to include the provision of an additional payment capability using the mobile phone.

The new service enables Utilita’s customers to purchase electricity or gas via SMS. The EckohPAY product handles payments in a PCI-compliant manner, and can be deployed through speech, Web, mobile, and smartphone applications.

Utilita customers who have pre-pay meters can purchase electricity or gas using the EckohPAY SMS service. Customers register their mobile numbers online and when they want to top-up they send an SMS message with their electric or gas card numbers and the amount they wish to pay to a dedicated shortcode. Once the details are validated and authorized, the customer is issued a code to activate the purchased electricity or gas.

"Following the successful launch of Eckoh’s Web payment solution last year, we were keen to work with them to expand the scope of services offered to our customers," said Bill Bullen, managing director and founder of Utilita. "With this new mobile payment facility, our customers have another convenient and secure method for purchasing their electricity or gas, and we expect to add further services during the course of our contract.”

"We are delighted that Utilita have chosen to adopt Eckoh’s mobile payment solution, and this demonstrates the value that our EckohPAY solution has already delivered them. This new agreement shows the breadth of Eckoh’s offering, covering speech, Web, mobile, and smartphone applications, which enables our clients to increase customer satisfaction through enhancing consumer choice and convenience whilst improving operational efficiency.”

Eckoh plc

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director

www.eckoh.com                                                                                  Tel: 01442 458 300

Corfin Public Relations          

Harry Chathli, Claire Norbury                                                           Tel: 020 7596 2860

Singer Capital Markets

Shaun Dobson                                                                                     Tel: 020 3205 7500

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh is the United Kingdom's leading developer of speech recognition for customer contact centers. 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 also provides complementary Web, mobile and smartphone applications to its portfolio of blue chip clients.

Eckoh’s secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle more than 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 Utilita Group

Utilita is majority-owned by one of the worlds largest smart meter manufactures (Secure Meters) and is leading the way in providing smart meter solutions in the domestic and commercial pre-payment market, lowering the costs and providing vulnerable members of society and small business under increasing economic pressure with the ability to accurately monitor their energy useFor more information, visit: www.utilita.co.uk