Talk Like a Human

Building trust through empathy-first AI voice strategy

Brief

Get enterprise users
Who felt frustrated by cold automation
To trust conversational AI
By designing an empathy-first voice system that scaled across 680,000+ support tickets

Role: Content Strategy Lead, Voice Architecture
Client: Fortune 500 tech company

Insight

AI assistants fail the moment people stop feeling understood. When 680,000 support tickets stack up, efficiency isn't the problem, empathy is. Users don't escalate to human agents because automation can't solve their issue. They escalate because they don't feel heard.

The business built automation. Users built frustration.

Truth: AI that sounds human earns human trust. The real risk wasn't sounding robotic. It was losing trust entirely.

The Creative Platform

Meet Iris — Automation with empathy built in

Rather than chase efficiency like every other AI assistant, we chased empathy. I led content strategy across UX design, research, product, and subject matter experts to transform Iris from a technical solution into a trusted brand character.

The challenge wasn't rewriting prompts. It was building a scalable voice system that could evolve with the product while maintaining humanity at enterprise scale.

The voice system became the connective tissue—informing product design, conversation flows, and user experience strategy.

Approach

To validate that empathy actually worked, I pioneered Wizard of Oz testing for the voice system. Our team manually responded as Iris while users believed they were interacting with automation.

This let us pressure-test tone, timing, and trust before a single line of code shipped. The results didn't just shape the voice—they shaped the product roadmap itself.

Four principles translated into conversation patterns that scaled across 200+ touchpoints and every user pain point.

How it Showed Up

See the voice system in action: one tiny moment that built the trust automation needed.

A Password Reset That Feels Human

From onboarding to escalation, every interaction followed the framework—empathy at scale, not scripts at volume.

Impact

80%

Reduction in support tickets

200+

Touchpoints redesigned for empathy

1

Breakthrough testing method scaled across enterprise AI

∞

Brand goodwill moments captured in every interaction

Why It Worked

  • Positioned empathy as the technical solution, not just the brand wrapper

  • Created a scalable system that maintained humanity across hundreds of thousands of interactions

  • Pioneered testing methodologies that proved conversational AI could earn trust, not just execute tasks

  • Built a voice framework their teams still use to design AI experiences that feel human, not automated