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"As Eckoh and BT’s track record has proven, the introduction of this automated service means we will have the capability to dramatically improve information availability whilst reducing the cost of providing this vital customer service."
Tom Voice, Director of BAA Retail IT
Tom Voice, Director of BAA Retail IT
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Investor Relations RNS Announcements 2004 Eckoh and BT sign 3 year speech contract with UGC Cinemas
Investor Relations RNS Announcements 2004 Eckoh and BT sign 3 year speech contract with UGC Cinemas | Eckoh and BT sign 3 year speech contract with UGC Cinemas 04/05/04 |
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Eckoh Technologies plc (“Eckoh”), one of Europe’s leading speech application service providers, in association with BT, one of the world’s leading suppliers of telecommunications services, today announced that they have delivered a cinema information and ticket booking service to UGC Cinemas, one of the UK’s largest cinema groups. The 3-year contract, which commenced on 16 April 2004, provides UGC with a one-number-solution for its group of 42 cinemas across the UK and Ireland. The cinema information and ticket booking service which has been developed by Eckoh is hosted on their 7,000 line call processing platform in St Albans and Hemel Hempstead, one of the largest speech enabled self-service platforms in the world. The service is supplied to UGC through the Eckoh and BT speech alliance and the revenues from the service are shared between the parties on a variable basis. This agreement was first announced by Eckoh in December 2003 as one of four Speech Solutions contracts valued at £6m over 3 years, of which UGC is the most significant deal. Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer of Eckoh Technologies, commented: “This is an exciting development for Eckoh as the UGC service is truly a mass market speech recognition service taking millions of calls every year and we anticipate that the positive experience callers will receive will assist us in accelerating the roll-out of other client services using advanced speech recognition. We remain committed to becoming the market leading hosting provider for Speech Solutions and we are encouraged at the strengthening prospects in this area.” Barbara Austin, Information Systems Director at UGC Cinemas commented: “The roll-out of our new speech recognition service provided by Eckoh and BT has gone incredibly smoothly and we are extremely happy with the performance of the system and the positive reaction we have received from our customers. I would like to congratulate the team on a first class implementation which will enable us to provide efficient yet personalised customer interaction which is vital to revenue generation for UGC.” How the service works UGC customers dial 0871 200 2000 to access the service and then using speech recognition they select the cinema they wish to visit either by asking for it specifically or by saying the name of a nearby town or city. They can then say the name of the film they are interested in seeing and the approximate time they would like to visit the cinema and the service will inform them of the most suitable performance times. The caller can choose to book tickets using a credit card which is completely automated, and in the event of the performance being sold out the service will recommend either the next available performance or the nearest cinema where there is availability. The speech recognition technology means that callers can now access the information they require far quicker than with the traditional touch-tone system, as they no longer have to listen to lengthy lists of options. It also enables mobile callers, an increasingly larger percentage of users, to have a more convenient experience than with touch-tone as they no longer have to keep moving the handset away from their face to make a selection. In addition to the automated speech service, live agents are on hand to deal with specific calls such as large volume ticket bookings. These agents use a web-based interface which integrates seamlessly with the speech platform by passing all the information collected from the caller on the speech application to a pop-up screen, allowing the agent to deal with queries in an informed manner without the caller needing to provide the information again. For further enquiries, please contact Eckoh Technologies plc Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer Tel: 08701 100 700 Buchanan Communications Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia Tel: 020 7466 5000 For further information on BT, please contact Band & Brown Communications, Josephine Bowen/Laura Lynne Tel: 020 7419 7000 |
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