Behind the tech: How dialogue design really works
About the show
Hosted by Nikola Mrkšić, Co-founder and CEO of PolyAI, the Deep Learning with PolyAI podcast is the window into AI for CX leaders. We cut through hype in customer experience, support, and contact center AI — helping decision-makers understand what really matters.
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Summary
Ever wonder what really makes an AI voice feel human? In this episode of Deep Learning with PolyAI, an all-star panel from our dialogue design and engineering teams takes you behind-the-scenes to share how the hardest part of CX automation actually works.
From latency and personalization to multichannel design and our in-house Raven model, they break down the science (and the art) behind building conversational AI agents that are actually worth talking to.
You’ll learn:
- Why dialogue design is notoriously hard, and how PolyAI cracked it
- The key factors that make conversations “buttery smooth”
- How omnichannel and LLM-powered design are changing everything
- What’s next for dialogue design, from multimodal to configurable latency
PolyAI's Jenn Cunningham guest hosts for this episode, moderating a discussion between Arkadiusz Kwapiszewski, Eshan Singhal, and Harry Swanson.
📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more conversations at the cutting edge of AI and CX.
Key Takeaways
- Dialogue design becomes productized: PolyAI has transformed dialogue design from a niche social science into a scalable platform capability, allowing CX leaders to build natural conversations that work across industries and channels.
- Voice AI that feels human: Success depends not only on accuracy but on voice quality, latency, copywriting, and personalization — all areas where PolyAI leads by embedding dialogue design expertise directly into its tech.
- Forward-deployed design in action: PolyAI’s dialogue design team partners directly with clients — visiting call centers, analyzing real calls, and co-creating workflows that blend empathy, efficiency, and automation.
- Omnichannel and multimodal future: By separating knowledge from channel-specific delivery, PolyAI ensures a single knowledge base can power voice, chat, SMS, and multimodal interactions, keeping experiences consistent and human-like.
Transcript
Jenn Cunningham
00:12 – 00:58
Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in.
So I’m Jenn on our product marketing team. I am a guest host this week, and so welcome to deep learning with PolyAI.
We are a window into AI for CX leaders. Really encourage everyone listening, to hit the subscribe button and leave us a five star rating on their favorite podcast app if you haven’t already.
So now let’s chat a little bit about productizing dialogue design. What we are all here to chat about today.
And I’m super excited. I am joined by three very smart people, from our dialogue design and engineering team.
So, guys, if you would like to go ahead and introduce yourselves.
Arkadiusz Kwapiszewski
00:58 – 01:34
Hi. I’m Arkadiusz.
I’m the head of dialogue design, here at PolyAI. And dialogue designers, like, this might be a new term to you, but, we have a whole team of linguists, human computer interaction specialists, prompt engineers, who are basically dedicated to ensuring that the experience of interacting with our voice assistants and and chatbots, is is absolutely top top notch, you know, people who are obsessed with.
attention to detail and and, really love thinking about edge cases and,.