​​Unbabel’s response to the COVID-19 situation
When you see countries in lockdown, borders closing, companies shuttering offices, everyone working from home, including our kids, you know these are extraordinary times. It is hard to tell what it will be like in 6 months or 1 year, but what we know is that the current times will put everyone and everything to the test. As CEO of Unbabel, it is my responsibility to ensure that we’re ready, resilient and supportive of all our stakeholders: employees, customers, partners and translators.
Our people
First and foremost, our priority is to ensure the health and safety of our global employees. Since last Wednesday, we have closed our offices and asked all employees to work remotely to protect themselves and their families from any risk of exposure. Moreover, we want to make sure that we follow the social distancing recommendations to minimize any risk of contributing to the spread of the virus. Although social interaction is a huge part of our culture, we have always been a remote-friendly company and we have the systems and processes in place to support working remotely. I don’t expect any disruption on our internal operation and capacity to respond to current and future challenges.
Our community
I’m also in close contact with our Community team, which looks after our translators and editors across the globe. Our Community has been working remotely from Day 1 of Unbabel, and thus are not impacted by any office shutdowns or quarantines. But we want to make sure they stay safe during this time by passing on the key messages regarding hygiene and self-isolation that protect themselves and their local communities around the globe.
Our customers & partners
We are working closely with our customers and partners to help their Customer Service Operations respond and adapt to the current crisis. As contact center locations encounter capacity limitations or complete shutdown, we’re helping our customers move their operations to new locations while supporting the same languages, or adding new languages to support an influx or backlog of tickets. Other customers are seeing a spike in volume due to rebookings, cancellations or shifts in consumer activity in this new stay-at-home economy.
I’ve asked the team to do a special webinar to share some insights from the front on how different Customer Service Operations are adapting to this situation. It is one way to help other organizations going through the same challenges of providing native language support at scale.
Moreover, to be able to respond in a swift manner, we have put in place a specific expedited process to scope and deploy new operations and languages while waiving some implementation and overages fees. Please contact your customer success manager for more details.
The current crisis will surely impact some important parts of the economy and everyone will be affected in one way or another. In these challenging times, I also want to assure you that we’re well funded and prepared to weather this storm together with our people, customers, partners, translators and investors.
This is a time to cooperate and to quickly respond to the challenges that this crisis has brought upon all of us. Together we will overcome and come out stronger than ever before.
Vasco Pedro
CEO and co-founder
