10th July 2006

The Best in British IT are Rewarded at the Information Age Effective IT Awards Ceremony where Sutton and East Surrey
Water Scoops 1st prize as well as a category commendation

London, UK – July 10th, 2006 - Fluency Voice Technology, (www.fluencyvoice.com) the speech recognition application company, has today announced that its client, Sutton & East Surrey Water plc, has scooped first prize in the Information Age Effective IT 2006 Awards in the category Most Effective Use of IT in Utilities, Energy and Telecoms. The award was in recognition of Sutton’s Virtual Call Centre based on Fluency’s speech recognition technology. Sutton’s entry also caught the judge’s eye in the broader Most Effective Use of Software where the Virtual Call Centre was given a special commendation.

Sutton and East Surrey Water plc is based in Redhill, Surrey and has developed a strong internal culture for innovation, leadership and excellence.  It prides itself on constantly being at the cutting edge of development, in particular applying this to continually drive customer service levels higher. It was this focus on improving customer service that led the team to boost its already very efficient call centre with an integrated speech-enabled solution from Fluency Voice.

The Sutton & East Surrey Water speech recognition project has already been awarded the Best CIS (Customer Information System) Initiative in Europe for 2005/6 in May this year judged by the US based Utility Planning Network (UPN). At this year's Effective IT 2006 Summer Spectacular, which was held in the unique Room by The River in London on the evening of the 22nd June 2006 representatives from the Sutton team enjoyed an evening of entertainment with all proceeds donated to the Wooden Spoon, the Effective IT 2006 Beneficiary Charity. Members of each winning team will be invited to attend the unique Effective IT Leadership Day which takes place later this year.

Philip Padfield, CEO of Fluency, comments, “Sutton and East Surrey Water’s application of our speech recognition technology is now firmly ranked amongst the Best of British IT projects and won this award against stiff competition from BP and Orange. Congratulations to the team whose vision and focus on customer service has been rewarded and recognised by industry peers.” Philip continues, “This is a great achievement against many global companies who also competed for the awards. The improvements in customer service and the substantial savings achieved with this project speak for themselves and provided the indisputable business value to impress the judging panel.”

“It is a great achievement to win this award,” said Phil Holder, Managing Director of Sutton & East Surrey Water.   “An impressive list of judges, who are themselves senior IT executives with vast experience in corporate IT selected us in the face of stiff competition from much larger companies.” Phil continued, “This project has been so successful that we are already working on the next phase.  At Sutton and East Surrey Water we have a continuous focus on applying technology to improve customer service and Fluency’s speech recognition solutions are currently at the heart of that goal.”

Sutton & East Surrey’s is now embarking on the third phase of its speech recognition application deployment and includes meter readings & change of payment options amongst its new challenges.

For more information on the Information Age Effective IT Awards please visit, www.effective-it.com.

About Fluency Voice Technology

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

About Sutton and East Surrey Water plc

Sutton and East Surry Water plc is a water utility company based in Redhill, UK. They supply water to 262,000 customers over an area of 733 square miles, including London Gatwick International Airport in the south east of England.