Transforming Workforce Training – Digital CxO Podcast EP112

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani, and with me today I have Doug Steven, he is the president of CGS Immersive. How are you doing today?

I'm Doing really well. How you doing, Amanda? It's, uh, thanks for having me on.

Yes. Happy to have you on the show. I'm doing well.

So tell me a little bit about CGS. What, what services do your, does your company provide? Uh, so CGS has, has been around since actually 1984, privately housed, located in, uh, in New York City.

Got 8,000 people across, uh, all the continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Primarily involved in, in developing, uh, enterprise learning, as well as, uh, uh, BPO support. And we've got an application for the fashion industry.

But my, my specialty is on enterprise learning and creating tools that will, uh, make an impact on our clients. Presently working with about 89 of the fortune of 500 companies. So, uh, it's great, this tribal knowledge that we actually learn from them.

So a lot of great stuff. We're working with great companies and, and, and we learn a lot from them and we package together to, to make solutions that, uh, for the betterment of all them. Wonderful.

So today's topic is new innovative technology and how it's helping with learning and skill building. So can you share a little bit about some of the tech you're working on and some of the technology that's making an impact in learning? Sure.

So, um, you know, we're, we, we have the pleasure of being involved in technology, but also our pedigree is learning. And in a lot of cases we've seen a lot of technologies come outta there, uh, that, uh, are great for technology, but not for really retention. So we, we've been historically been involved in, you know, process and technical type of training, and we've always wanted to dip our toes into, uh, role-based, uh, soft skills, human skills training, is what they now call it.

Uh, but we, we always thought that, um, we don't know if, if we could do as well as we should, as we did in our other different, uh, areas that our expertise four and a half years ago, we became part of the OpenAI Foundation. Uh, that was a hallelujah moment for us because then we saw the advantage of, uh, you know, combining ai, uh, into learning to make a significant dis difference. So we created a product called Cicero.

And, and what's advantageous about this, it was born on ai. Uh, it was literally grab, built from the ground up on ai and its number one goal is to create, uh, role playing in businesses as well as coaching. We're pretty excited about it.

That's awesome. So, um, can you share a few use cases where, where it's, uh, making an impact? Yeah, so just to back up a little bit, one of of the things that we found, uh, when we poll our, our customers is that 86% of the people thought role playing was very, very critical, um, in, you know, in really enhancing the skills of people.

Um, but when we ask 'em if they really like to do it, it dropped to 38%. 'cause they, it won't be embarrassed in front of their peers, right? So then we said, um, you know, role playing as itself is, is very expensive.

Uh, especially you have to get a peer, you have to take them off the job, they have to take time out to work with it. And, and really only from the director level up would be able to have that experience. And we said, let's look at the democratization of skills acquisition.

And what I mean by that is, can we bring great training down to frontline users and make it affordable and make it so that it's attainable and accessible? So what we did is we, we created Cicero and it's really, it's, it's really claim to fame is a person can practice safely, don't have to be embarrassed, um, they're not gonna be judged wrongly because the person on the other end had a bad day. If the computer has a bad day, it goes down.

So it's, it's one of those days. And second of all, can we empower the people in the companies to create these, um, role playing scenarios without relying on technology companies to do it? So there were the big three, and could we do that in multiple languages?

So we created it and one of the things we, we said is, let's be broad based, meaning let's empower our customers to create snares. They think best. And I, I can tell you, uh, we're dealing with one of the largest, uh, medical device companies in the world, and they're presently using it.

And it dropped, um, it, it increased the success of their salesman in the surgical sales because they were able to practice when they're dealing with the COOs and the surgeons at these hospitals, they can practice against those type of personas and be very successful. So just little things. We're working with a blood collection company where they, you know, have to have difficult conversations with donors.

You know, some of them, you know, can't give blood or you have to tell 'em they can't give blood for six to eight weeks and they're volunteering or taught, you gotta be, you know, these are ways that become difficult conversations. Uh, to be able to practice that safely and to be able to judge on the fly is something that we thought was very, very important and that's why we created it. Awesome.

So we talk about how AI can be used, uh, for learning. Um, and I think about, there's a lot of different ways, but I think about most recently I had a conversation with a friend and they said that someone came to a job interview and they just absolutely blew it. So I think that this could al also be used for helping train people for interviews.

It's funny you mention that. So we, we have a component called, uh, called Cicero interview. And what's interesting is, um, a couple things happen.

The job description is posted. People, um, submit their resumes against the job posting, and the companies that are praising it have these scales of what they think are best. So now the tide is turned where the avatar is now asking you questions and it's gauging against, it's looking at your resume.

It's worth saying if you have six years, it can calculate the number of years. It can ask you all those questions. And it can become really important when it's, say, technical architects where now it can ingest all, say the coding of PHP and ask some technical questions and see how well they do on that.

So it, you know, and people can practice this without being embarrassed. That, that to me is really, you know, holy cow. You know, one of the things we're talking about, uh, there's a lot of people that you meet that you don't wanna meet in role playing, but you will meet them and you just can't go to your peer and say, you find not all people in your organization are bad people.

They're great people. So it's hard to get someone who's really tough this way. You change the persona to as aggressive f you want using the five different personality forms.

Um, and now you're into a real difficult conversation. And if you can overcome that, then you know, you have a really great chance to be successful when you face the people. Now, it's not the be all for all of it.

Like we, we still look, we look at this as complimentary to, to a lot of the different tools, like the little nuances that you get when you're seeing a human to human interaction. But this really is fantastic, uh, for getting people prepared, at least to the last level. Absolutely.

I always say communication is key, and if you're able to develop your communication skills to handle any personality type and know how to have a good conversation with them, you will get far anywhere. I feel like, You know, it's, it's funny you say that because uh, uh, there's been, there's been such a push on, on, you know, technical skills and then when the pandemic happened and people were, were doing Zoom and back and forth and, and that whole interpersonal skills and communication I think took a blip. And, uh, it's, it's hard, uh, for people.

A lot of people say, I just wanna do it on, on the web and don't wanna face, and this is a good prep for it. And, and that's what we see that, um, these technologies can be used for the betterment. And it's, it's really just to go as to an aside on that, you know, a lot of people are nervous about losing their jobs.

And we're looking at, in our industry, it's the instructional designers and we're saying, but now an instructional designer can spend time on what they think is the best scenario to create versus the creating a bunch of tools or a bunch of different pages. Now they can think of, you know, pedagogically what's best for my company, versus, oh, I gotta get storyline to put this thing together. They can spend quality time on what's right for the situation.

Absolutely. So kind of, um, bespoke for each company exactly what they need. That I, I'll have to remember that.

Yes. So yeah, it is, 'cause that's what we said is like everyone says, well, you know, are you gonna go into the farm industry to the customer service? And I said, obviously, but we don't know that business as well as the business themselves.

Why can't we just empower them? And if, if they know how to write in Word, they can write their scenario and let, and what we do is AI takes a look at all the documents they have in their secure folder, and if they give PDF, it can be videos and, uh, you know, the ID writes a paragraph or two what they want, then let AI create the scenario for you and you edit it. So within 15 minutes, uh, people can start testing it.

That's fantastic. Well, you know, technology is advancing quite rapidly. Where do you see the future of this technology, say a year from now?

Holy, I mean, before we had runways of one in three years. It's, it's weekly. Um, it's, the change is frightening.

And I think, um, you know, you're, you're going to see in a lot of cases the the combination of, of not just ai, but now the combination of, of ar where you'll be able to, you know, drop your digital twin assistant into your own office and do that type of practice. We're seeing some of our great partners, what they're doing is they're actually connecting, uh, Cicero to Salesforce to get all the data on a particular, say, physician. So now not only are they not practicing against physician, they're practicing against Dr.

Smith. Now you then have a hologram of Dr. Smith, you have his voice.

Now all of a sudden this is as real as you're gonna get and it's gonna come. It's a, we're doing it now. Um, but it's, it's exciting.

But it's, it's, it's a little scary sometimes. And you see just how quick change is coming. It's, and I'm an technologist.

I mean, I, I see it, I say it's a, it's an interesting time that we're in. Yes, it definitely is. Well, if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with, what would that be?

The most important thing is embrace it. There's always going to be, there's always trepidation of, of change, but those early adopters who take it, embrace it and look at it, will become the leaders of tomorrow. Period.

Yes, indeed. Well, thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing your insights with us. Thank you, Amanda.

I appreciate the time you gave me. All right. And thank you to our audience.

Stay tuned. There's more.