O2 LANDS DEAL WITH HOMESERVE

O2 today announced that it has won a coveted contract with Homeserve plc, one of the UK’s largest providers of home emergency insurance. O2 will provide voice and mobile data services in a three year deal that will see approximately 4,000 connections transferred to O2 from incumbent providers Orange and Vodafone, using devices including BlackBerry and PDAs.

The deal will see O2 providing mobile solutions to enhance the efficiency and flexibility of the Homeserve workforce, ensuring its ability to respond to emergency calls as quickly as possible and maintaining the high levels of customer service it prides itself on. Homeserve considers mobile technology critical to the success of its business, with over 5,000 employees and sub contractors remotely located across the UK. O2’s excellent UK network coverage was a significant factor in its selection as a mobile partner.

Over the course of three years, O2 will work closely with Homeserve to provide various mobile solutions, including routing calls via a VPN to help reduce the overall cost to the business and enable employees to communicate economically and efficiently with customers. This is just one of a number of applications that O2 will offer to Homeserve employees and subcontractors to continue to assist and improve their business processes and efficiencies.

Trevor Didcock, CIO at Homeserve plc said: “Homeserve is committed to providing unsurpassed customer service. We have thousands of tradesmen on the road and they all need to be in touch with our customers and offices 24/7. From real time updates on PDAs to communicating with customers via SMS, this new partnership with O2 will support our future ambition to stay ahead of the pack and ensure we are delivering a first rate service for our customers.”

Ben Dowd, Business Sales Director, O2 UK, said of the deal: “Mobile technology can be used for so much more than simple communication. As a business, customer service is at our core and we are delighted to be working with Homeserve to help them provide the very best service to their customers. “