DialogCoach™ – Beyond Role-Play

Dialog Coach

The use of a role-play simulator in tough economic times

Improving employee performance in this economic environment is now even more critical to a company’s future. Developing knowledge-based programs will continue to be “business as usual” and miss the mark when it comes to changing people’s habits. Poor habits deliver poor results, and customers will find other suppliers and products. So, how can training be changed to improve not only the knowledge of learners but to improve performance?

One solution is DialogCoach™, a personal role-play simulator. DialogCoach™ was developed by Michael Allen and his team to create a solution to improve consistency around what people say and do. Using a cognitive recall model, DialogCoach™ enables a learner to reach critical performance faster than traditional passive classroom learning and reduces costs.

The costs associated with live training, additional trainers to practice one-on-one, travel costs, and opportunity costs all add up significantly. All companies work to bring new hires up to maximum proficiency in a variety of ways. Learning designers continually work to maximize live learning time by pushing more and more knowledge development to an asynchronous environment. Now learners are able to go a step beyond role-play by practicing before they arrive for live training.

DialogCoach™ software uses a patented design that walks a learner through a scenario, allowing him or her to verbalize what needs to be communicated to the customer. The early levels reinforce “best practice” and enable learners to create habits around what they need to say. By verbalizing each key point or question, learners gain immediate feedback through voice recognition built into the technology, reinforcing that they are delivering what is required. No other technology does this with such accuracy and efficiency.

All the content is customizable, which enables companies to train learners objectively around their content. Typical role-play allows for significant subjectivity and can create a variety of learner outcomes. DialogCoach™ gives objective scores after each level based on exactly what the learner says and how he or she navigates through visual aids or call-center screens. As learners move through the levels of DialogCoach™, support is slowly removed, ensuring learners come up with, in their own words, the talking points critical to successful customer interactions. This removes the “robotic” nature of scripted interactions, and improves feedback.

Game mode, the 4th learning level in DialogCoach™, is a unique part of the learning process in that it allows learners to miss talking points when they begin. When they miss the talking point, a video (or audio used in a non–face-to face-simulation environment) of the client appears and asks the learners “did you want to tell me about…” specific to what they missed. This step is impactful because the learner is hearing immediately what he or she missed, with the virtual customer asking the learner for the correct dialogue – not a real customer. This critical step helps in the self-discovery phase, and breaks out of the normal role-play subjectivity because even trainers can miss some critical points while listening and attempting to develop their feedback strategy to the learner.

DialogCoach™ delivers results. In numerous client testimonials, this unique role-play simulator has improved employee performance results. In a call-center environment, DialogCoach™ has improved Average Handling Time as much as 22% within 60 days, as compared with standard classroom training. First Call Resolution also improved as much as 7%, clearly showing improved customer satisfaction with performance. All of this data continues to show that having learners practice consistently will improve customer service and enhance bottom line performance.

Along with external surveys and metric measurements, companies can track the results within DialogCoach™. The objective scoring aspect of the software includes immediate learner feedback, and DialogCoach™ will send these results to an LMS, directly to managers, or to a gradebook program so that the objective performance of the learner can be reviewed. This automatic data includes audio files, so trainers/managers can hear the learner perform and listen to how many talking points were communicated. Trainers/managers will also have the ability to review the objective scores with the learner.

So how has this technology advanced? After acquiring DialogCoach™ over 3 years ago, DialogCoach (the company) has invested significant resources to improve the interface and its performance. Original developers reacted to market requests, which made the old interface more difficult to navigate, creating an opportunity for much needed improvements.

The DialogCoach organization put the technology into utilization labs, with real end users, gaining significant feedback on how to improve this technology. DialogCoach™ 5.0 is the outcome of these years of development, keeping the original patented learning design of online role-play, but improving performance with new source code and an interface developed by learning professionals. What this means to users is exciting new user friendliness with a state-of-the-art development.

Other products are beginning to come into this space as knockoffs with unstructured learning, and no proven track record like DialogCoach™ has clearly demonstrated over the past 8 years. Along with the numerous bugs, these products are attempting to imitate DialogCoach™’s track record of success in over 20,000 users who have been able to benefit from this technology. DialogCoach™’s continued research should perpetuate development to the next level of role-play through “second life”–type environments and adapting the role-play process to help the learners.

It is time for change in the training environment to improve performance with consistent role-play. Traditional role-play over the phone does not ensure consistency, live role-play is expensive and subjective, and online learning can be difficult to track performance. If you are ready to take your learners beyond role-play and hear more about the improvement DialogCoach™ can offer, visit their website at www.DialogCoach™.com.