International Brilliance Awards 2026 | Brand Brilliance | Silver Award Winner: SupportYourApp

About the Brilliance Awards Winner

In this edition of Behind the Brilliance, we feature SupportYourApp, the winner of the Brand Brilliance award and a Silver award winner for Brilliance in Customer Service. Since 2010, this organisation has evolved from a small customer support department in Kyiv into a global Support-as-a-Service leader with a team of over 1,500 professionals speaking more than 60 languages.

Led by Daria Leshchenko, recognised as both CEO of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year, SupportYourApp has redefined performance by treating customer support as a high-stakes tech product rather than a mere utility. Their methodology is built on a high-performance culture that integrates research-backed AI solutions, such as Quidget and Voice AI, to automate routine tasks while allowing their highly skilled “Supporters” to focus on complex cases and genuine human connections. By blending top-tier security standards like PCI DSS and ISO certifications with an empathetic, human-first approach, SupportYourApp ensures that new standards of quality are built from within to create sustainable, world-class service cultures.

For me, brilliance is something that comes from shared effort. These awards prove that empowering people with the right tools makes innovation and growth natural.

Interview with Daria Leshchenko, CEO and Managing Partner of SupportYourApp

Congratulations on winning the Brilliance Award for Brand Brilliance, the Silver Award for Brilliance in Customer Service, and on Daria Leshchenko being recognised as both CEO of the Year (Brilliance Award Winner) and Entrepreneur of the Year (Gold Award Winner) at the Business Brilliance Awards! Can you share a brief overview of SupportYourApp and how the company has evolved in recent years?

Since 2010, we have grown from a small customer support department in Kyiv, Ukraine, into a global Support-as-a-Service leader with hubs across the world and a team of over 1,500 professionals speaking 60+ languages. Add our spin-off project Label Your Data, and that makes up to two thousand teammates.

We’ve evolved from prioritising loyalty to a high-performance culture where we reward efficiency with internal growth. By integrating AI, we now automate most routine tasks, allowing the consultants to focus on complex cases and human connections. That blend enables us to champion empathetic customer support, which brings us recognition by the Inc. 5000, as well as other awards.

SupportYourApp has positioned itself as a secure, professional, and AI-driven Partner. How has your brand strategy helped you stand out in a competitive global market?

Our brand succeeds by treating support as a high-stakes tech product rather than a utility. Our teammates are Supporters, with the capital letter, highly skilled professionals whose empathy makes our service stand out.

As we’ve integrated Quidget, we were able to bridge the gap between the efficiency of automated customer support and a nuanced human touch.

Because we prioritise high standards and maintain PCI DSS and ISO certifications, we guarantee reliability and speed that global leaders demand from a strategic partner.

Innovation clearly plays a central role in your growth. How have AI-led solutions such as Quidget and Voice AI transformed your customer service model?

Before AI, we relied on solving requests manually, with consultants spending time on important but repetitive queries. That caused longer wait times during peak hours and limited our team’s ability to handle high-priority technical issues.

When we started automating typical tasks, we realised AI could be a catalyst for our service model. Quidget and Voice AI resolve up to 80% of routine inquiries, cutting response times by half. Meanwhile, our consultants focus on complex cases, increasing overall resolution rates by 68% across all channels.

Independent studies confirm that hybrid models like ours achieve as high as 8.7 out of 10 satisfaction scores, and our experience proves it.

Blending automation with human expertise can be challenging. How do you ensure that technology enhances, rather than replaces, meaningful customer experience?

By delegating data to AI and emotion to humans, we ensure personal interactions are faster, more informed, and genuinely meaningful. Here’s how this works in practice.

When FitXR, a VR fitness company, reached out to us, they needed to manage sudden traffic spikes and a growing backlog of routine inquiries. That is a typical situation with growing businesses that experience such a surge during, let’s say, Black Friday and don’t need to commit to a large customer support team just yet.

We offered to integrate AI to automate three-fourths of their repetitive tasks, like subscriptions and password resets. The mix of AI and human expertise fit their needs because technology resolved the volume instantly, allowing our consultants to focus on high-touch user interactions.

As a result, FitXR was able to get rid of their backlog and scale during peak periods without increasing headcount.

In this case, technology didn’t replace meaningful customer experience, because a password reset doesn’t need to go through a complex emotional dialogue. At the same time, where emotional stakes were high, human supporters became more available.

Customer Service excellence is at the heart of your Silver Award. What do you believe has been the key driver behind your measurable improvements in response time, satisfaction, and scalability?

We’ve spent over a decade polishing our human-only customer support when AI entered the scene, disrupting the world of tech. For us, new ways of automation felt more like a relief. It finally allowed us to focus on things technology can’t replicate.

So automating routine tasks allowed us to cut response time; AI-assisting consultants behind the scenes improved the quality of their responses; and that together increased customer satisfaction.

Since AI can act as a filter that gets more efficient as the business grows, it allows our infrastructure to scale during traffic spikes without a massive increase in human effort.

Your company has expanded across 90+ countries while maintaining high security standards. How important is compliance, trust, and accountability in building long-term client Relationships?

These protocols directly improve client retention. Clear processes mean fewer audits and fewer security concerns during collaboration. This reduces the workload and builds deep trust. By handling difficult compliance work upfront, we create a reliable environment that encourages partners to stay long-term.

We can take our partnership with Mastercard as a prime example. They operate at the highest security level, PCI DSS Level 1. Working with such global leaders is only possible because we meet strict compliance standards. High safety is the entry requirement for the big leagues.

SupportYourApp has seen significant staff growth and international expansion. How has leadership ensured culture, clarity, and performance remain strong during this growth?

On this long journey, we’ve made mistakes in trying to rapidly scale to new remote places. We learned our lessons, and I’ve grown to realise that in a global team like ours, culture stands on trust and empowerment.

We empower teammates to lead initiatives they care about. One example is our ecological commitments and achievements. It started almost a decade ago when a regular support consultant shared her idea with me. She suggested we start recycling in the office, I supported it, other leaders picked up on it and developed it into a tradition.

Also, scaling globally taught us that DE&I is market intelligence, not a math problem. We use AI to remove hiring bias and design team-building events in a way that doesn’t just put diverse people in the same room; it allows them to share perspectives in a safe environment.

Daria Leshchenko has been recognised both as CEO of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year. What leadership qualities do you believe have contributed most to this recognition?

I believe resilience, accountability, efficiency, and delegation helped us reach this level.

Early on, a key team member suddenly quit, leaving no instructions behind. That exposed a lack of systems and put our 24/7 operations in an unstable position.

I took accountability by transforming the chaos into a sophisticated organisation. We documented core processes, creating strict SOPs and earning PCI DSS Level 1 certification. This focus on efficiency ensured we could handle global financial data with total precision. Such standards allowed me to delegate effectively, empowering my team to lead.

During my 15-year tenure as the CEO, I’ve had a number of situations like this. I make sure we learn from mistakes and move on with a new empowering habit or skill that can define our success in the future.

Winning multiple Business Brilliance Awards is a remarkable achievement. What does this recognition mean for SupportYourApp and your global team?

When we get an award, we write a post acknowledging team effort and the meaning behind the recognition. Then we display awards in the office where people can take pictures and join the celebration.

While we are genuinely proud to win four awards this time, we try not to view them as trophies. A recognition like this is more market feedback. It tells us: well, our internal standards surpass our clients’ expectations, and our culture enables us to achieve that.

Finally, what does “brilliance” mean to you at SupportYourApp, and how do these awards reflect your ongoing commitment to innovation, accountability, and customer excellence?

For me, brilliance is something that comes from shared effort. These awards prove that empowering people with the right tools makes innovation and growth natural.

It matters because of the commitments we keep when no one is watching. We don’t wait for award season to be diligent; we embrace the grind of regular audits. By combining external certifications like ISO and PCI DSS Level 1 with internal checks, we make high-level security and quality our natural baseline, not a special performance.

Celebrating Brilliance

The work of SupportYourApp highlights a critical competitive advantage in the modern workplace: the ability to sense, reset, and align human empathy with the speed of artificial intelligence. By focusing on the “how” of collaboration, delegating data to AI and emotion to humans, the company ensures that the “what” of business delivery lands cleanly and endures without sacrificing the meaningful customer experience.

Through Behind the Brilliance, we continue to highlight the work behind award-winning organisations, offering a closer look at the thinking and discipline that lead to results that hold.

About the International Brilliance Awards™

Founded in 2014, the International Brilliance Awards™ recognise work defined by clear thinking, strong execution, and meaningful business impact across organisations worldwide.

The International Brilliance Awards™ serve as the flagship programme of the Brilliance Awards family, which includes Business Brilliance Awards, HR Brilliance Awards, Internal Communications (IC) Brilliance Awards, Marketing & PR Brilliance Awards, Sales & Revenue Brilliance Awards, and Sustainability & ESG Brilliance Awards.

Each programme focuses on a distinct area of organisational performance, while maintaining a consistent standard of evaluation through an independent, blind judging process.

Through initiatives such as Behind the Brilliance, the awards also offer a closer look at the work behind the results, highlighting the thinking and discipline that define award-winning organisations.