Webinar · 18 Mar 2026
Building AI agents for the real world
Speakers
Jenn Cunningham
Senior Manager, Strategic Product Marketing, PolyAI
Oliver Shoulson
Agent Design & Engineering Lead
Watch on demand
Watch on demand
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Open this form on HubSpotThe art of agent design
Most agents are built for the demo. Controlled inputs, predictable flows, no real-world messiness. Production is something else entirely, and getting the technology right is only part of the challenge.
Hear from Oliver Shoulson, PolyAI's Agent Design & Engineering Lead, and Jenn Cunningham, Senior Manager of Strategic Product Marketing, for an honest conversation about what separates agents built to impress from agents built to perform.
What you'll walk away with:
- What it actually takes to build an agent that works in the real world, not just in a controlled environment
- The two dimensions of great conversational AI, and why getting one right isn't enough
- How to handle the real mechanics of spoken conversation: interruptions, barge-in, and real-time comprehension
- What good recovery looks like when a conversation goes off-script, and how to design for it deliberately
- What gets left behind when the "anyone can build an agent now" approach skips the hard parts