How Practice Makes Perfect with Skillsoft’s CAISY™ Conversation AI Simulator

Communication will always be the key to business success, no matter the role. Important business conversations are part of not only individual career growth, but organizational success. From new managers giving a performance review for the first time, to sales leaders looking to equip a field team to pitch a new product, every employee needs to learn how to communicate with their peers, direct reports, and leadership team to achieve their business results.

These business conversations may change as employees progress in their career, but the common denominator will always be the ability to communicate effectively. It is a timeless skill that every employee needs to consistently nurture as they move from role to role, or up the chain of command - whether it comes naturally or not. Where organizations have traditionally missed the mark is with providing employees with a low-stakes way to practice, build and retain those skills before applying them to real-world conversations. So, where can businesses start?

We are excited to launch Skillsoft’s CAISY™ Conversation AI Simulator, an innovative generative AI based tool for simulating business and leadership conversational skills. Skillsoft’s CAISY makes those difficult work conversations easier, by providing employees with an emotional safe space to practice important business conversations with an AI-powered trainer. CAISY not only plays the role of the other person within the conversation but also provides personalized feedback and guidance on communication style to guide development.

Scenario-based practice is best when it’s designed to mimic real-life situations, and CAISY does just that, making communication more natural when it comes time to handle those difficult conversations. If a customer representative is looking to practice handling difficult interactions without the risk of losing customers, or a product leader wants to role play a product launch decision with a stakeholder CAISY is the perfect resource.

Skillsoft’s CAISY can help you practice these difficult conversations:

• Coaching an absent employee
• Change management
• Cultivating empathy and connection
• Leading through change
• Product launch decision
• Sales motion
• PR Scandal
• Customer service – irate customer
• Customer service – refund request
• Nurturing your own wellbeing

More scenarios will be added in the coming weeks and months.

Organizations need a way to help all of their employees develop the communication skills they need to achieve their business objectives through the art of practice. Yet, designing these transformative learning experiences is often challenging and ineffective. Through experiential, active learning like CAISY, organizations can prepare employees across the business to achieve sustainable change through behaviors and actions. This will allow businesses to build effective leaders that directly impact business outcomes and ensure better retention of learning.

Create a Safe, Trusted Practice Environment

With CAISY, employees are able to practice in an environment where it’s okay to make mistakes. Through the replication of real-world scenarios, learners can ask questions, make requests, and receive real-time responses, without the fear of getting it wrong. CAISY allows employees the time and ability to practice with the appropriate feedback and guidance that gives them the confidence to lead those difficult conversations when it matters.

Make Relevant, Engaging Learning Experiences

Depending on one’s role and level, the important conversations that will be needed will vary. CAISY allows learners to choose the workplace scenarios that work best for them, spanning management, sales customer success, product development and more. This allows employees to understand their specific strengths and weaknesses by tailoring their practice to the situations that make most sense to them, in their typical business speak.

Build Agility

We all know that conversations are never linear. There are a variety of ways that they can happen, depending on who they’re with. CAISY enables learners to practice in real-time using varied scenarios, via text or verbally, and therefore forces them to think on their feet to respond in the moment, just like they would in a real conversation.

Real-Time Actionable Feedback

And lastly, the feedback, guidance and conversational experiences that learners will have with the AI trainer is unmatched. Learners have the option of going through the conversation in either practice mode or role model mode. In practice mode, the learner plays themselves in the conversation, whereas in role model mode, the learner has the ability to see how the AI trainer would handle the conversation. Not only does CAISY hold the mock conversations, but it provides top-of-the-line advice and instruction on how to optimize the conversation next time. Therefore, the learner can see what they did well and suggestions for improvement.

CAISY uses generative AI in an ethical and responsible way through the implementation of appropriate guardrails, widely recognized as important for AI systems like ChatGPT. These additional security layers help to mitigate biases in training data, promote fairness, reduce the spread of false information, and prevent offensive or inappropriate responses through the conversations that learners have with the AI trainers. Every time a conversational scenario takes place, the system is monitoring for abuse, correct context, and scenario accuracy. For example, if a learner were to initiate an off-topic or inappropriate conversation with CAISY, the simulation would guide the learner to only make appropriate statements. The learner can then resume or restart the conversation. Striking this balance is crucial to avoid overly restrictive measures while maintaining responsible deployment.

CAISY combines practice and role modeling scenarios to help individuals develop these critical power skills for success. It utilizes Skillsoft’s proprietary architecture integrated with generative AI as the underlying engine, with D-ID being utilized for the text-to-video introduction and adversary image.

Prepare your employees to have effective business conversations that drive positive behavioral change. If you are interested in joining the waitlist to become a Skillsoft’s CAISY Beta user, please email us at AI@skillsoft.com. And to learn more about Skillsoft’s Leadership and Business solution portfolio, visit skillsoft.com/leadership-and-business-skills.