London, UK; Lisbon, Portugal. 29 March 2019. Unbabel, the leading enterprise multilingual support provider, has won the UK National Innovation Award for “Innovations in Blending Human & Artificial Intelligence”.

Judges recognised how, in partnership with Concentrix (the worldwide leader in customer care) Unbabel had digitally transformed traditional customer language support by adopting a unique combination of machine learning, AI and human translators.

The National Innovation Awards (‘the Nationals’), backed by the Directors’ Club United Kingdom, look at business technology innovations and their impact on customer experience, employee engagement, operations performance, product creation, and profitable growth.

Working with Concentrix, Unbabel’s video entry to the Nationals was based on introducing a new multi-lingual operating model to a global travel organisation. This addressed the organisation’s customer challenge of email backlog in languages that were proving difficult to resource in terms of translation.

Unbabel blended human and artificial intelligence to create multi-lingual hubs in low-cost, language-agnostic locations capable of any-time support in 29 languages. After an implementation of just four weeks, the travel organisation saw tangible improvements in CSAT, percentage of issues resolved, and first-time response.

110 Directors’ Club members judged the finals, with more than 60 members judging each category. Each judge nominated a winner (2-points) and a runner-up (1-point) for a category. The finalist with the highest number of points was adjudged the winner.

Vasco Pedro, CEO of Unbabel, commented: “I’m delighted that we’ve been recognised by these prestigious awards for our work with Concentrix. Today, customer satisfaction is at the top of the business agenda, so being able to serve customers immediately in their native language represents a great competitive advantage. I’m proud of our team who delivered a truly disruptive solution, and it’s wonderful that so many leading CS figures judging the Nationals agreed.”

Jon Snow, Founder & Chairman of Directors’ Club, commented on the results: “Our 2019 finalists are all pushing the boundaries of how businesses engage with their customers. Each “Our Innovation” video provided a window into the creativity and vision of the finalist. Judging the finals was a journey of discovery and a valuable learning experience for our Judging Faculty. Congratulations to the Winners, but an equal congratulations to all who made it to the finals.”