Problem
Prospects evaluating Twilio's Voice AI products could read documentation and watch video walkthroughs, but nothing let them experience the technology working in a real context before signing up. At the same time, the sales team had no structured way to qualify prospects before they reached out directly. There was an opportunity to solve both with one experience — a live demo that advanced the evaluation journey while gathering the qualification data sales needed.
Solution
I began by reviewing existing research on demo behavior, conducting a competitive analysis, and running stakeholder interviews with product and sales teams. Research confirmed that demos are most valuable when they show real product capability rather than simulating it. Stakeholder interviews surfaced the key capabilities to highlight and the exact information sales needed to capture in order to qualify a lead.
The core design challenge was the conversation flow, specifically when the agent should ask for information versus provide it. I mapped out the full logic: the agent asks for one piece of information at a time, then responds with something useful and personalized about Twilio. I defined branching logic for refusals based on user sentiment, gated sensitive information behind explicit sales consent, mapped data handling to user permissions, and designed for edge cases including miscaptured information, backend errors, and off-topic inputs.
For the interface I partnered with a UI desginer to create a reusable shell that could be used for future demos covering different products and channels. They layout brought together a configurations panel, a phone UI that sets expectations for the voice interaction, a profile panel that populates in real time as information is gathered, and a transcript and analysis panel that surfaces both the live conversation and the business-side insights a Twilio customer would see on a real call. After engineering built the working demo, I partnered with them to iterate on system instructions until the conversation felt natural and aligned with our desired outcomes.
Results
In post-launch user testing the demo scored 4.5 out of 5 on ease of use, and users described it as engaging and genuinely different from what they expected. The sales team responded positively, gaining a new way to surface qualified prospect data earlier in the funnel.
- 4.5 / 5 ease of use score in post-launch user testingting
- Positive sales reception with prospect qualification data captured earlier in the funnel than any previous touchpoint
- Reusable demo shell already used for a second Voice demo, with additional channels in progress
