Eckoh Technologies plc (“Eckoh”), one of Europe’s leading providers of outsourced automated solutions and BT, one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions, today announced a 3-year contract with Parcelforce Worldwide, the UK’s leading express carrier.

The contract, which marks Eckoh’s entry into the £23 billion European express logistics market, is to supply Parcelforce Worldwide with a new automated information service that allows customers to track parcels and make re-delivery arrangements over the phone on a 24-hour, no queue basis.

The service, which will go live this summer, will be one of the first in the UK’s express logistics industry to give customers personalised information. It will use advanced speech recognition technology and caller identification processes to recognise callers, anticipate their information requests and offer personalised information about their particular packages. A further innovation of the service will be the ability to give customers the option of receiving status updates on parcels via text message.

Customers will be able to arrange new delivery times and later this year they will be also be able to automatically make the additional payments to secure a Saturday delivery or a delivery to a new address using Eckoh’s automated payment solutions.

Emma Bailey, Customer Services Policy Manager at Parcelforce Worldwide says: “Immediate access to up-to-the-minute relevant information is crucial for customers and we intend to provide that in a fast, efficient way by using automated solutions, but without losing the personal touch.”

“We believe Eckoh and BT’s hosted solution not only provides us with the flexibility we need to cater for the variable peaks in our business but most importantly delivers a quality of service and convenience that will impress our customers and enhance our business relationship with them,”

Nik Philpot, Eckoh’s Chief Operating Officer comments: “Companies sometimes assume that using an automated system rather than customer service agents involves compromise, gaining cost efficiency but at the price of an impersonal customer service. However as the Parcelforce Worldwide service illustrates, this isn’t the case, as they expect to substantially reduce their costs while making the access to information easier, faster and more responsive to individual customer needs, which has to be a positive step forward for all involved”.

In the first year Eckoh expects to manage in excess of 1 million calls to the new Parcelforce Worldwide service.