Integration of voicebots in training: increasing sales effectiveness.

In the dynamic world of sales, continuous employee training is crucial. The challenge is to develop effective training methods that are both cost-efficient and scalable. This is where the use of a voicebot offers an innovative solution.

Traditional sales training is often time-consuming and requires a lot of manpower, especially when training sales calls. Participants have to call each other, practise conversations and run through scenarios, which is not standardized and can only be implemented with considerable effort.

Scalable and efficient training through technology

The aim is to develop a technical solution that enables telephone calls to be practiced efficiently - from support to sales, scalable and flexible, with minimal personnel input. The solution should be suitable for training purposes as well as for direct end customer contact.

Development of a customized voicebot: methodology and technologies

The creation of a customer-specific voicebot model based on a mathematical model with various data sources enables customized training. The voicebot can be configured in the desired language and voice to suit different use cases and linked data sources.
The Supratix voicebot has already been successfully used in the “Agile Project Management” simulation game and is individually adapted to defined processes for business simulations.
The voicebot initiates calls and the employee responds to them. This enables a dynamic and adaptive development of the conversation. Responses are tracked and can be analyzed in feedback discussions. A voicebot can take on different roles - cooperative or challenging - to train different scenarios such as de-escalation or closing quality.
To enable a seamless and efficient interaction between user and voicebot, with a focus on intelligibility, naturalness and responsiveness, different technologies work together depending on the requirements of each project.

• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR): Web Speech API; Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS)
• Natural language processing (NLP): Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), spaCy
• Dialog management: Dialogflow or Microsoft Bot Framework
• Text-to-speech (TTS): Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML); Web Speech API (TTS component)
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI): TensorFlow, PyTorch; ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange)
• Voice biometrics: VoiceXML; ISO/IEC standards for biometrics: For example, ISO/IEC 19794-6 for biometric voice data interchange formats
• Integration interfaces (APIs) and cloud infrastructure: RESTful APIs and JSON; webhooks

Successes and added value of using voicebots in training

The use of voicebots for employee training enables a hands-on and interactive learning experience with individual feedback and high flexibility, which significantly improves communication skills while reducing training costs. With their instant availability, scalability and ability to quickly adapt to new content, voicebots offer an efficient and effective solution to boost employee performance in the real working environment while ensuring consistent training standards.

An important finding is that the acceptance and success of voicebot-based training depends heavily on the quality and realism of the simulated conversations. Continuously updating the scenarios and data sources as well as adapting the voice and language of the bot to the target group is crucial for this.

Summary and outlook

Using a voicebot to train sales staff offers an innovative, cost-effective and scalable method of improving sales skills. In the future, training efficiency can be further increased by improving personalization and integrating specific customer profiles and skill profiles.

Voicebots can also be trained for interactive hotlines and process customer concerns automatically in future. This frees up your employees from recurring standard tasks and gives you more resources for service inquiries that require intensive consultation. It also reduces waiting times and ensures that your customers always feel they are in good hands.