Škoda Auto | NiCE Cognigy

Lifelike AI avatars transform retail training

Škoda Auto is a global automotive manufacturer focused on delivering consistent, high-quality customer experiences through its retail network. To improve training and ensure consistent service standards, Škoda built an AI training platform for their staff where realistic avatars simulate real-life customer interactions and provide instant knowledge and feedback.

The challenge

Training retail partners all over different markets and languages demands consistent communication skills, structured knowledge transfer, product understanding, clear localization and the ability to handle real customer interactions.

Traditional training methods were resource intensive, inflexible and difficult to tailor to the needs of each specific market. In order to optimize training for Škoda's retail partners, a new approach was needed – one that lets staff practice real customer conversations whenever they need to, in their own language, and get feedback without waiting on a trainer's schedule.

The idea was to give retail partners a realistic AI avatar that simulates a customer for real-life dialog training. It needs to react in real time, understand what is said, check it against Škoda's knowledge base, judge tone and language skills, and flag anything inappropriate, all while the conversation is still running.

The solution

Together with NiCE Cognigy, Škoda built ŠAILA, a training platform that pairs retail partners with a realistic AI avatar acting as the customer. Retail partners can now practice customer conversations in real-time while their dialog and answers are fact-checked and feedback on tone and communication skills are provided.

To let every market train in their own language, prompts were tuned for local nuance, voice recognition accuracy was improved within Cognigy, pacing and pronunciation were fine-tuned so the avatar sounds natural in every language, and native speakers reviewed every module before rollout. Additionally, voice recognition was fine-tuned, background noise was filtered out, and a text-input option was built in as a fallback for noisy environments to keep conversations smooth.

Delivering ŠAILA reliably meant choosing the right voice and avatar technology, and building an architecture that could run inside Škoda's corporate environment. New features were validated through automated end-to-end tests, and manual testing for every module and language.

The impact

Retail partners now get consistent, hands-on training on Škoda standards to improve both their product knowledge and communication skills.

ŠAILA's flexible and always-available setup enables retail partners to continuously learn on their own schedule instead of waiting for a workshop slot. This transforms practice into a regular habit rather than a one-off organized event and increases adoption and effectiveness. Additionally, the solution ensures standards are maintained across markets and localized precisely.

ŠAILA, the realistic avatar, has become the scalable training model that enhances employee performance and customer experience, and provides training experiences that genuinely resonate.

Lifelike AI avatars transform retail training

Realistic

Multilingual

Always-on

The challenge

The solution

The impact

High staff acceptance

Consistent service quality

Scalable learning model

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