Customer Spotlight
London Business School
London Business School started working with Verbit to enhance its online courses by providing transcripts and closed captions, now it has expanded its use across various departments, from marketing videos to executive education and tech courses.
In a Nutshell
London Business School began using Verbit to professionalize its fully online synchronous elect education courses by offering transcripts and closed captions to learners. Now, Verbit has found its way around the school and is being used for the captioning of marketing videos for the london.edu website, by the executive education team for Zoom courses and recordings and on all of LBS’ tech education internally designed online courses.
"Verbit’s one of those platforms because it does what it does so well, it just sells itself around school. Everyone likes to use it because it’s so quick... Verbit was just a simple win.”
The Challenge
With students spending £90,000 on programs, LBS needed a solution to deliver fully professional video products with captioning. However, the LBS team found itself managing the production of 40+ videos at a time and transcribing them manually. Additional stakeholders, such as the LBS marketing and executive education teams, wanted to make sure promotional videos and interviews with prominent CEOs were accurately captioned and accessible. The school needed a more reliable alternative to free tools that could handle large volumes of video.
- A time-consuming, manual transcription process
- An inability to rely on the accuracy of free, automatic tools
- An increase in use cases and video volume for captioning & transcription
- A need to prepare for the shift toward accessible, inclusive courses
The Solution
Verbit’s tools far surpass the free tools formerly used by LBS in terms of accuracy and reliability. Verbit has removed manual transcription work, making LBS’s video and audio recordings for a variety of open programs, online programs, electives and marketing efforts accessible. Verbit’s tools are helping LBS deliver a professional standard of online learning products to executives. Additionally, as LBS’s agenda for meeting diversity and inclusion requirements grows stronger, it’s also preparing its faculty for the likely shift toward school-wide accessibility.
“A couple of times in the past 2-3 years, people have questioned whether we should use Verbit, and the thing I always say is a) people spend a lot of money here and b) I can’t guarantee the quality of those free services.”
The Results
Reliable accuracy over free services
“If you’re selling a product that is 60 percent video content, then you need to make sure that all parts of it are really accurate. Others were saying [free services] are good enough, but I can just say to them, “No, this is going to be nine times more accurate, it’s not going to make you look silly.’”
Automation to eliminate manual work
“I found Verbit, and it just seemed such a good fit because I was literally just about to send 40 videos manually to somebody to download, and watch, and transcribe, and the process just felt so painful. Verbit was just a simple win.”
Marketing videos and additional use cases
“Our internal AV team found it really useful for making sure that closed captions and transcripts for marketing videos were professionally done and that we didn’t misuse free things like YouTube closed captions. They’ve started using it for marketing videos which go on our london.edu website and other channels like YouTube as well. They quickly saw the benefits of using Verbit than using free things.”
Meeting accessibility trends and expectations
“I think within a year, LBS will have a clear policy to say any video at all in any shape of fashion should include closed captions to their transcript… One of the reasons why I always say we need Verbit as part of our arsenal – so once that trend turbo charges, we’re ready to meet it.”
"We do lots of business interviews, so CEOs from around the world... If the transcripts are inaccurate or the closed caption is inaccurate, it’s very embarrassing for the faculty member and for us as well, so using Verbit gives us the confidence to say to faculty, ‘This is accurate.’”
About London Business School
London Business School is consistently ranked amongst the world’s best business schools and is a constituent college of the federal University of London. It attracts international students of 100+ nationalities. Its motto is “To have a profound impact on the way the world does business.”