How Korn Ferry transformed their coaching offering using Yoodli AI communication coach

Company Overview:

Korn Ferry is a leading global organizational consulting firm that works with clients to design optimal organization structures, roles, and responsibilities. They help them hire the right people, focus on the right skills, and advise them on how to reward, engage and motivate their workforce while developing professionals as they navigate and advance their careers. 97% of the Fortune 500 uses Korn Ferry (KF) services in some capacity. As part of the KF Enterprise Coaching solution, clients have the ability to schedule 1:1 sessions with certified coaches and access learning content through the Korn Ferry Talent Suite , their digital platform.

Pain point: 

The KF leadership team needed to drive reinforcement after human coaching sessions. This consisted of three parts:

1. Make practice more scalable: The Talent Suite hosts a repository of digital learning content (best practice videos, documents etc). However, they needed a more applied way of helping clients learn. Generative AI would be the way forward.

2. Improve the existing communication skills practice flow: The Talent Suite included an existing interview preparation platform. This provided users with basic feedback (eg. filler words) on their communication skills. KF wanted to make the platform more conversational and expand the scope beyond just interview preparation.

3. Time to market and cost: Korn Ferry has the history of integrating with innovative technology providers and saw the ability to do so here. 

Solution:

Korn Ferry partnered with Yoodli genAI communication coach to revamp their Talent Suite product. With Yoodli, clients can now practice any conversation – an interview, a difficult manager conversation, upcoming presentation, sales pitch among others – and get instant feedback on their communication skills, all using Korn Ferry’s bespoke intellectual property. 

Yoodli drives coaching reinforcement, creates a jaw dropping moment during client pitches, and provides ongoing self-serve communication coaching for all our users. We’re more competitive in RFPs and are seen as effectively leveraging AI to help our clients Be More Than. – Bryan Ackermann, Head of AI Strategy and Transformation at Korn Ferry

Yoodli is now offered to every user on Korn Ferry’s retail (consumer) product and as an add-on/ reinforcement service for their enterprise coaching services. 

The Yoodli integration lives within the Talent Suite  and has the look and feel of the platform. Given the confidentiality of customer data, it was paramount that any practice sessions be locked down on the platform. Yoodli is SOC 2 Type 2 and GDPR compliant. With Yoodli, data is only accessible to the learner and can be automatically wiped depending on enterprise needs. 

The biggest advantage with Yoodli has been the ability to augment human coaching. KF coaches think of Yoodli as the medical report if they are the doctor – it quantifies their coaching and allows them to focus on the higher level aspects of the human-to-human interaction. Almost all Korn Ferry coaches recommend Yoodli as part of their client interactions.

“I pitched Yoodli as part of our offering to the Chief Learning Officer of a Fortune 100 pharma company. Their reaction was priceless – Yoodli’s AI powered roleplays are getting more realistic everyday. Yoodli is now central to every sales pitch we make” – Claudia Solomon, Principal, Korn Ferry.

Impact:

1. Time to market: Korn Ferry was able to bring AI communication coaching to market in under a month, much faster than what it would have taken to build the platform in-house
2. Dollars saved: Korn Ferry saved in labor costs, storage, and development in developing this from the ground up
3. Competitive differentiator: Korn Ferry now includes Yoodli genAI communication coaching in most client offering and RFP proposals as a competitive differentiator
4. Client & coach feedback: Clients finally enjoy practice and coaches have an AI tool that extends their session. Here’s what one client had to say to the roleplay AI simulation: “Fantastic! Brutal Likes that it pushes questions back at me.Nerve wracking, but gets better with practice”