TODAY’S THOUGHTS ☠️

Hey there 👋,

I think a lot of L&D teams are sleeping on (or quite frankly, are not aware of) AI-enabled voice agents.

I see so many text-based only solutions in both the market and internal teams’ tech stacks. Which is a shame because voice is a gateway to another level of immersive learning experiences.

So, today, I’m sharing how I built two voice-enabled AI agents to enhance the learning experience for two different projects.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

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IN THIS DROP 📔

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THE BIG THOUGHT 👀

There’s a lot of things the L&D industry has wished it could do for a long time with tech but never had the capability to do it (for the most part).

Take one of my own ideas back in mid-2018 when I was leading digital learning for one of the world’s biggest retailers (yes, that was an ego boast). I saw the next evolution of our internal built learning platform as a conversational assistant that lived on every employee’s desktop.

Ideally, I wanted it to be within the apps they were already using.

At the time, this idea was not easy to bring to life. The tech was average, the cost was phenomenal and audiences just weren’t ready for a solution like this.

Today is a different story.

I can deploy (and have deployed) a solution like this quickly, with a great experience and at a fraction of the cost to what I was quoted back in 2018 for a glorified “choose next topic” bot. My point is that we have great access to tech that can bring a lot of those pre-2022 ideas to life.

It’s never been easier or cheaper (depending on your token consumption) to build impactful learning products.

Plus, our customers (not learners ❌) expect much more now.

The fact is we’re all becoming AI-native. Everyone is using AI. There’s no longer a debate about that. What we should be focusing on is how we’re using AI in our work.

For us L&D pros, we have a lot to be excited about if we use AI as the infrastructure to achieve some of our biggest learning geek dreams.

I want to show you how I brought two of my own dream products to life with AI.

I’m still bemused as to why I see so many text based only gen AI products in L&D.

I suppose it feels comfortable and familiar.

Deploying voice enabled experiences doesn’t seem as popular right now. Dare I say, it’s underrated. That’s a real shame in my eyes because there’s something so immersive about a true conversational experience.

Perhaps the truly awful Siri experience many of us iPhone users suffer on a daily basis has given people a bad impression.

Let’s change that for you.

Voice agents are what they say on the tin. No typing or complicated prompting required. You talk, the agent listens and talks back. Just like you would with another human 😱.

One of my biggest convo points the last 4 years has been encouraging you not to bolt AI onto what you already do, but to reimagine, or what I like to call rewire, what we do and how we do it.

I have two examples using AI voice agents to break down with you.

You can follow along with me in the video demos below as I give you a step by step “how-to” and do this for less than $10 a month. Even if you don’t use this at work, you can still go and experiment.

We’ll be using ElevenLabs to build our products.

You can create an account for free and choose the plan that best fits your requirements. I use the $6 a month plan for all of mine. It is disgustingly cheap vs what you get for it.

Here’s the step-by-step breakdown of the voice agents I built, including why these solutions and how I built them.

We spend a lot of time teaching people what to say in difficult conversations. Yet, we spend almost no time letting them practice how to say it.

You’re never gonna learn tone, timing, or emotional regulation from a slide deck (or elearning 😂).

AI changes this.

I built this product in less than 15 minutes. ElevenLabs helped me build a fully working voice agent to test my skills with difficult performance conversations in a private space.

It was the most intense difficult conversation I’ve had in the last few years.

What made this truly immersive, and I must admit was a bit of a ‘wow’ moment, was switching on the Expressive Mode in ElevenAgents.

It felt like talking to a real person.

The agent would talk over me, make sighs and raise their voice.

It made the conversation just as tense as real life, and that's a good thing for a learning simulation.

This is a product I’ve used on quite a few projects.

In the video, I’ll show you:

When was the last time you finished an end of course quiz and thought "wow, that really helped me"?

Yeah, me neither.

It's all just a game of who has the best memory, not who can actually do anything with what they learnt.

↳ And that’s a big problem.

That’s what I’m tackling in this video (aren’t you lucky!) where I build something different.

We’re going to build a voice-enabled AI learning coach that talks and treats you like a human. It will help you assess what you’ve learned, challenge what didn’t click and make a plan to apply everything in the real world.

We’ll do all of this in less than 15 minutes.

And…you can finally say goodbye to those pointless quizzes and tests that you know everyone cheats on, anyway.

I’ll show you:

For long-time readers, you may recall this edition where I covered how AI can change the way we assess “learning and performance” in organisations today. Safe to say, I still hate tests and quizzes.

It’s not lost on me that I show you how to do a lot of stuff with AI in L&D.

But there’s the small print, right?

Which is always ‘if’ you’ll be able to use it in the workplace. You’ll have a certain system of context and constraints that will either enable you to try these solutions or be blocked from them.

Despite your organisational framing, learning how to create products like I’ve showcased is an advantage for your career and skills. You gotta be AI-native.

In a Q&A session with L&D pros last week I was asked “How can I demonstrate my AI skills to employers?” My answer was simple: show them that you can build and work with AI.

That is done through real-world products you’ve crafted and videos like I share with you. Not text on a resume or a social media post.

As one of my favourite books by Austin Kleon says: “Show your work”

There you have it, friend.

I hope this has given you the spark to go and play with AI voice agents.

As we all need to become AI-Native L&D pros, this is a good way to shape your current knowledge and craft the most desirable skills.

P.S. speaking of AI-Native L&D Pros…my next half-day workshop on helping you with this is coming up in June. I bring 10 L&D pros together to connect, learn and get a complete operating system for working with AI in your L&D role.

FYI: This isn't a tool demo or a prompting workshop.

→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.

👀 ICYMI (In case you missed it!)

VIDEO THOUGHTS 💾

What are AI agents, and how do they actually work?

That's the million dollar question these days. Especially as we are in the peak of conference season.

In this video, I'll walk you through everything you need to know about AI agents, so if you're trying to figure out how AI agents work in practice, this one's for you.

Enjoy 😊.

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