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Home arrow Investor Relations arrow RNS Announcements arrow 2005 arrow Scottish Power adopt Speech Recognition Service from Eckoh
Scottish Power adopt Speech Recognition Service from Eckoh    28/11/05 Print E-mail
Advanced speech recognition service from Eckoh Technologies plc keeps consumers in the picture

Severe winter weather is one of the most common causes of power outages across the 3.4 million UK homes and businesses served by Scottish Power’s electricity distribution network. This winter, consumers affected by power outages will have 24-hour access to an automated telephone service that uses advanced speech recognition that is able to provide up-to-the-minute service restoration information. To deliver this service Scottish Power’s in-house capability has been supplemented by the High Volume Call Answering Service (HVCA®) from Twenty First Century Communications, Inc., (TFCC) which incorporates advanced speech recognition technology from Eckoh.

The HVCA® service can deliver location specific information thanks to Eckoh’s advanced speech recognition technology, which can capture the caller’s spoken post code and address and entered telephone number, use that information to pinpoint the location for which the caller is reporting an outage and then provide available service restoration information for that location. The system will also recognise callers registered with Scottish Power as being ‘at risk’ - individuals, for example, whose medical needs depend upon electricity - and can pass them directly to a contact centre agent for personal attention.

“Our previous automated solution depended upon Caller Line Identification (CLI) – a system by which the caller’s telephone number is broadcast to us through the telephony network, allowing us to identify the source of the call,” says Kate Walker, Distribution Call Centre Manager for Scottish Power. “This was not a fool proof system since it couldn’t cater for individuals calling from mobile phones, phones that don’t broadcast CLI or from alternative locations. The new system is more accurate and comprehensive because it uses personal information delivered verbally by the caller to give location-specific information.” Scottish Power can also be confident that the service will accommodate the high call volumes that can occur when power outages are severe because the speech automation capability is hosted via Eckoh’s own technology platform. Able to handle more than 8,000 calls simultaneously and up to 650,000 calls per hour, it is the most flexible speech platform in the UK.

Eckoh’s technology will also help Scottish Power to maintain its reporting commitments to the regulator, Ofgem, by allowing an end-to-end record of every service enquiry to be kept, whether dealt with by an agent, the automated service or by a combination of both.

The new service between Scottish Power and TFCC has been in place in Scottish Power since May this year, allowing its potential and robustness to be tested during the relatively quiet summer months.

Eckoh Technologies, a leading supplier of automated speech solutions for the contact centre industry, has established a partnership with US based TFCC to deliver power outage communications solutions to UK utilities. This is the second substantive deal signed for the partnership, the first being with Northern Ireland Electricity for HVCA® service, which went live in December 2004. Jim Hennigan, Eckoh’s Managing Director, estimates that, “the market for automated speech solutions within the UK utilities industry will be worth around £3 million in 2006 and will grow at a CAGR of between 25 and 30% between now and the end of the decade as customer service quality becomes an ever more imperative concern for utilities providers in both regulated and de-regulated areas of their business. With TFCC already providing services to over 70 million households in the US utilities market, we believe there is considerable potential to extend our reach here in the UK.”
 
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