Transform Your Teams' Training Experience With Pitchboy

I attended Pitchboy's demo to a cyber security expert last week. My takeaway is that the way we take training at work doesn't have to be boring!

Simulating a fraud attempt with technology: the immersive Pitchboy experience

👦🏻👱🏻 "-Hi, this is Clement from IT. I don't know if we've had a chance to run into each other before. How are you?

-Hi Clement, no, I don't think we've had a chance to run into each other, but I'm fine, thank you.

-I'm really sorry to bother you, but it's super urgent. We received an alert a few minutes ago: your account has been hacked...."

Totally believable conversation, except that Clement is a virtual agent who will try to trick his interlocutor into downloading a program then ask for his password and log-in credentials.

Pitchboy's CEO doesn't get tricked in the demo, but his skepticism and resistance score isn't perfect either. In real life, this would provide an opportunity for a debriefing and a deepening of his knowledge.

Edgar Dale's Cone of Learning Theory

Compliance, harassment, conduct at work, cyber-security, role-playing, etc., what do we learn from the training we have to do as part of our job?

Let's start with a few things about how our brains approach learning. Edgar Dale (1900-1985) is a researcher and professor in education. In his theory, he determines several levels of learning depending on the method used. Thus, according to him, after two weeks, we retain :

• 10% of what we read
• 20% of what you hear
• 30% seen
• 50% seen and heard, or demonstrated
• 70% by having participated in a discussion or given a lecture
• 90% by having experienced or lived a situation

Source: Akto

So much so that immersive training in the manner of Pitchboy is the Holy Grail for all managers.

Speech-to-text and deep-fake in the service of training

Created in Paris in 2019, Pitchboy has developed its algorithms based on off-the-shelf speech-to-text solutions from Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It provides a platform for interactive training via voice, video, or virtual headset for a fully immersive experience. With its technology, understanding what the person says reaches 100%, whether in English or French, by integrating the context. During the demo, even with a hoarse voice, it works.

Adding deep-fake, with video, audio recording, and lip-syncing, Pitchboy arrives without filming at the 🎅🏽 Santa experience below. Talk to him; it's bluffing!

Pitchboy use cases and integration with e-learning platforms

In Pitchboy's catalog of achievements, some of which you can find on their Youtube page:

• A harassment or compliance training,
• An immersive training in a car rental agency,
• Onboarding and training a new hire in a supermarket,
• A video where the Pitchboy person speaks with a perfect American accent, even though he's French (everyone knows this never happens in real life!) - contact me if you want to see this demo ;).

Pitchboy's strength is its integration with Learning Management Systems like Cornerstone, 360Learning, or Syfadis. Pitchboy has pushed the envelope on this sensitive point and manages to integrate where customers usually report big difficulties.

The solution has of course a dashboard where the learner can see his progress, and where the manager can consult the trends of a team, a region, a set of sales outlets, etc. The data is anonymized to comply with the RGPD.

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