SpeechStorm’s Video IVR Wins Nomination to Represent Belfast at the Global Mobile Premier Awards

London & Belfast, UK – January 18th, 2010 – SpeechStorm, (www.speechstorm.com), the specialist provider of phone self-service solutions, has today announced that its IVVO™ Video IVR service has won the nomination to represent Belfast at the Global Mobile Premier Awards.

The Mobile Premier Awards are the largest open and global competition in the mobile industry for start ups and recognise excellence in mobile innovation, social change and user experience. The awards ceremony takes place at the Mobile World Congress in Barcleona on February 15th. SpeechStorm’s Video IVR will now be assessed by the jury in January against 75 worldwide contenders for a chance to make it to the shortlist of 20 startups who will be invited to the finals.

SpeechStorm’s winning nomination was announced in November at an event hosted by MobileMonday Belfast, the Belfast (Northern Ireland) chapter of MobileMonday, which showcased some of the best digital creativity in the province.

Video IVR or IVVR (Interactive Voice and Video Response), combines familiar voice-based IVR self-service features with video to create a compelling visual experience, allowing a caller to interact with a real-time video stream by pressing buttons on a handset or through speech recognition.

SpeechStorm’s IVVO™ extends this further using dynamic video generation to deliver fast, interactive applications for mobile banking, customer self-service and interactive advertising for 3G video enabled phones. SpeechStorm customers include two of Turkey’s largest banks, Turkiye Is Bankasi (Isbank) and Akbank who launched the world’s first Video IVR-based mobile banking services to coincide with the launch of Turkey’s 3G network in July 2009. This followed the much publicised success of Middle East based telecommunications giant, Etisalat, who was the first to offer video calling-based customer care services to its 8.5 million Egyptian customers using SpeechStorm’s Video IVR.

Damian Kelly is VP of Strategic Development at SpeechStorm and is delighted with the award nomination and comments, “It is an honour to be selected by MobileMonday members to represent Belfast in these prestigious awards. Video IVR adds an exciting new dimension to phone self-service across a wide range of industry sectors and applications, opening up new revenue streams and delivering significant cost savings as well as an enhanced customer experience. It has huge potential that we hope will be recognised by the judging panel to see us through to the finals at Mobile World Congress.”

About MobileMonday Belfast
The MobileMonday Belfast chapter is actively networking with other chapters around the world to offer a more global exposure to speakers and discussions, and help the rest of the world discover the talents in mobile technology locked-up in Northern Ireland. More information can be found at http://mobilemondaybelfast.org/

About SpeechStorm
SpeechStorm specialises in self-service solutions that manage customer interactions over the phone.

The SpeechStorm portfolio provides a combination of best-fit solutions that give customers the service they want; whether touchtone, SMS, Video or Voice. SpeechStorm transforms the simple phone into a rich interactive tool for accessing content, finding information and interacting with an organisation to fulfil customer requests and optimise customer care goals.

Organisations including Dixons Stores Group International (DSGI), SITA Suez, eircom, Northern Ireland Electricity and Comet rely on SpeechStorm solutions to underpin their business performance and improve the overall customer experience.

Backed by a professional services capability of more than 250 consultants, SpeechStorm is part of Kainos, a leading IT consulting and Systems Integrator. For over 20 years Kainos has been deploying critical customer interaction solutions giving SpeechStorm distinctive edge over most phone self-service specialists. SpeechStorm has offices in the UK and Ireland.

For more information please visit the corporate website on www.speechstorm.com .