9th May 2006

London, UK – May 9th, 2006 - Fluency Voice Technology, (www.fluencyvoice.com) the speech recognition application company, today announced that Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water, a major water utility company serving a population of more than 420,000, has selected Fluency’s speech recognition software to deliver a new way to pay for its customers.

Bournemouth Water continuously strives to keep customer satisfaction levels up and bills down.  Ofwat, the water industry regulator, has identified Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water has the fourth highest ranking water company in England and Wales in the Overall Performance Assessment which is a composite measure of service and performance and one of only four companies to be ranked in Ofwat’s highest A/A efficiency category covering operating costs and capital maintenance. This relentless focus on improving service levels and keeping operating costs low lead the team at Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water to offer its customers a new automated way to pay their bills at their own convenience 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The fully automated speech recognition credit and debit card payment facility is provided by Fluency Voice Technology’s VSA (Virtual Speech Agent) Suite™, now the system of choice for 8 other water companies in the UK. The Bournemouth team visited Sutton & East Surrey Water whose virtual call centre powered by speech recognition technology provided by Fluency, has just received an international utility ACE award for excellence in Customer Information Service.

“Fluency is the perfect choice for us and has received very positive endorsement from other water companies who have successfully used their speech recognition technology to automate payments and improve customer service and choice,” said Mike Sylvester, IT Project Manager at Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water. “Our motivation is to extend customer choice but also to improve payment rates, increase cashflow and reduce the time spent chasing payments.”

Customers are taken through a simple set of questions and then payment is taken via debit or credit card. Bournemouth advertised the new service to customers via their website, door-drop leaflets, newsletter and the annual water bills which went out in March 2006.  Now operational for 2 months, Mike is pleased with the take up of the automated voice payment line and looks forward to it becoming more and more popular as its convenience and availability is further publicised adding, “This is a convenient, 24x7 service that reflects what our customers have told us they want and underpins our corporate culture of continuous improvement.”

Paul Barnes is Fluency’s Vice President of Sales & Marketing and comments, “We are delighted to welcome Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water to an impressive list of utility companies who have identified Fluency speech solutions as the system of choice to automate payment systems thereby increasing customer choice and service levels. We look forward to building on this good work and reputation and further penetrating our share of this and other vertical markets.”

About Fluency Voice Technology

Fluency Voice Technology is a leading provider of packaged speech recognition applications for use in call centres. Our solutions enable enterprises to significantly reduce costs and enhance customer service by automating much of the high volume call centre activities.

Key sectors for which Fluency has developed applications are Financial Services, Travel & Transport, Utilities, Telecoms and Retail. Fluency has always been at the forefront of speech recognition and has changed the way in which businesses use speech by introducing the first ever packaged speech application in 2002. Fluency has offices in the UK, US and India.