NEWS SPECIAL AWARDS Special awards: Hays’ Lisa Read is Unsung Hero while Zen3 wins Innovation Award
Hays’ Lisa fulfils a dying mum’s wish
PENNY AKAM UNSUNG HERO AWARD LISA READ
The agent who helped a dying mum raise money for her two young sons after hearing her tragic story has praised her colleagues for their help.
Hays personal travel consultant
Lisa Read received the Penny Akam Unsung Hero Award, sponsored by Affordable Car Hire, at this year’s Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards for her selfless work helping single mum Sam Kyme, 34, who was diagnosed with aggressive motor neurone disease in April. Her dying wish was to raise
enough money to cover legal and guardianship fees to ensure her boys Joey, 12, and Harry, eight, could live with her sister Pippa and her family in Australia. On hearing about the local
mum’s illness, Read took it upon herself to raise money to help Sam’s wish come true and asked colleagues and head office staff at Hays Travel to donate to the cause.
“All I could think of at the time was how to help this family as much as I could”
Within four weeks Hays Travel
had raised £2,150. “All I was thinking at the time
was ‘how can I help this family?’ I have not done anything – just helped this family as much as I could. I read about Sam and felt I needed to do something and that was it. Once I get something in my head I have to follow it through. “She wasn’t my customer but
she lived locally. If it wasn’t for the team at Hays’ head office and my boss we wouldn’t have raised whatwe did. I would like to get to £5,000 to help them even more. Every £5 can make a difference. “I treasure the fact that people
took time to read this story. This family needs help; these boys no longer have a mum. If I can make their life a little better, I will.”
Zen3 wins with call centre innovation
INNOVATION IN TRAVEL AWARD ZEN3 (for Sayint)
Zen3 followed up its double success at last year’s Travolution Awards by scooping the Globe Innovation in Travel award, sponsored by Travelport.
The Indian technology firm won
Travel Weekly sister publication Travolution’s Best Technological
Innovation and Best Use of Data awards last November. Zen3’s Sayint call centre
analytics technology has been developed in partnership with online travel agency Teletext Holidays. Teletext partner Truly Travel has deployed Sayint in its Indian contact centre to record and analyse every customer call. The technology turns this into
text and uses artificial intelligence to give businesses insight into how its agents deal with clients. James Lever, Zen3’s solutions
Hays’ Lisa Read, Affordable’s Angela Day and Lucy Huxley
18
travelweekly.co.uk 18 January 2018
team chief technology officer, said winning the Globe award was a huge achievement on the back of
“Artificial intelligence has existed for a while but it’s how you apply it that’s important”
its Travolution Awards success. “It’s a fantastic honour to be
awarded this prize,” he said. “This is great for us to be recognised by the industry and a player like Travelport.” Lever said the Zen3 team in India will be celebrating its latest success and he was proud to be a part of a firm bringing pioneering technology to the travel industry. “Artificial intelligence has
existed for a while now but it’s about how you apply it that’s really important,” he said. “Sayint makes businesses confident their staff are working in a way that reflects their values, in a way that’s never existed before. “Today you can know precisely
what your best seller does and that can help you retrain your other staff to do the same.”
Zen3’s James Lever, with Paul Broughton, Travelport, flanked by Travel Weekly’s Stu Parish and Lucy Huxley
PICTURES: STEVE DUNLOP
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