Ageas revolutionizes sales training with a new Digital Coach, powered by Azure OpenAI

Patrice Gaucher, Regional Director for Asia at the insurance company Ageas, is roleplaying a difficult sales conversation at his office in Hong Kong. Gaucher makes a phone call asking for the prospect, Mr. Hussein, a business owner who is always in a hurry and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

“Who is calling? I don’t appreciate unsolicited calls,” the prospect tells him. Gaucher explains that he has been working for Mr. Hussain’s friend for a number of years and since he was satisfied with the service, has recommended Gaucher touch base with Mr. Hussain who could benefit from Ageas’s services.

Mr. Hussain says he doesn't make decisions based on referrals alone and asked for further clarification about what Gaucher wants to discuss.

So Gaucher asks the trainer for some advice: "Coach, I could use some guidance here. The customer seems quite reluctant to meet, so how do you suggest I tackle the situation?”

“Here are a few strategies you can employ,” the coach replies. The coach then lists five detailed suggestions to help navigate the challenging situation. “These strategies aim to defuse tension and open a dialogue rather than forcing a meeting,” it says.

Exercises like this are helping around 2,000 Ageas insurance agents build one of the hardest skills in sales: connecting with people.

Yet, in this roleplaying exercise, Gaucher is the only human. Both Mr. Hussein and the coach are digital creations – AI personas powered by Azure OpenAI, their voices brought to life by Azure AI Speech.

The Digital Coach app, launched in March, is the brainchild of Gaucher, who worked on the concept in his own time to develop a prototype.

“I've always been an early adopter of technology across a variety of fields,” he says. “I was experimenting with Large Language Models and text-to-speech and developing ideas as to how this could be used in a corporate environment, and specifically how it could address a business need for us in Asia, where there is a lack of training manpower. I had no idea if it would work.”

But it did, and the board of directors was wowed by his demo. The Digital Coach is now in use in Portugal, Turkey, Malaysia and the Philippines. In the second half of 2025 Ageas will roll it out in India, Vietnam and Thailand and will launch a pilot project in Belgium.

The new training platform makes Ageas one of the frontrunners in its industry, offering unlimited, in-depth, personalized training to its army of part-time and remote salespeople.

It all comes down to soft skills

In much of Asia, the life insurance industry is less mature than in Europe and the US. This means many countries do not have a lot of people who have spent significant time face-to-face with customers – so finding qualified sales trainers is difficult.

You cannot teach someone to sell insurance products and services from a textbook; sales agents have to learn through numerous customer interactions, he adds. “You're selling a concept, a promise of payment 20 or 30 years down the line. It's not an easy sale to make,” he says.

"How do you put yourself in the shoes of a customer? How do you convince a customer of the best insurance solution? It’s difficult to nurture sales talent with one-off training. You need to train your sales muscles." adds Frédéric Crecco, Director of Group Technology for Business at Ageas.

“It all comes down to soft skills, the ability to build a connection with customers. That's the number one determining factor in whether a salesperson makes a sale or not. Unfortunately, that's very hard to teach in a classroom.”

Even when trainers are experienced and well-qualified, their capacity to add value is limited by time and geography.

“When you do have a classroom with 20 sales people and you do roleplaying, that's beneficial, but it's limited,” Gaucher adds. “When agents are sent into the field to meet with customers, they might struggle and become discouraged.”

Immersive, personalized training

Staff who train with Digital Coach can choose from several ready-made customer profiles – such as single students, married couples without children, or divorcees with children – each with detailed backgrounds and personality traits that shape the interaction.

They can also create custom personas, defining specifics like name, age, financial priorities, and personality traits. The Digital Coach generates unique, unscripted conversations every time.

"Even if our agents practice ten times with the same customer persona, every time it will be a completely different interaction. Nothing is scripted. In sales, adaptability and agility are essential," Gaucher says.

Sales scenarios cover the entire journey, from prospecting and opening interviews to product discussions, referral requests, and objection handling. The platform even features role-reversal simulations where agents can take on the persona of a customer with objections while the AI plays the salesperson. Gaucher, a seasoned insurance industry leader, found this feature to be especially powerful.

“The value lies in how the AI navigates your objections, and it does it in a very professional manner,” he says. “Even with the experience I have, I thought it was very compelling, and that I’m going to remember this next time I'm in front of a customer and this situation presents itself.”

Overcoming roadblocks

The Digital Coach was developed through a partnership between Ageas, Microsoft, and Reimagine.

“We chose Microsoft because we needed to go fast and because the idea was quite innovative,” Crecco says. “We wanted speed, but as we are a regulated company we wanted to be robust as well from day one, both in terms of potential scalability and especially in terms of security.”

Developing the tool took 12 months, but navigating internal legal and compliance assessments took six months. “There was no reference use case anywhere for something like this,” Gaucher explains.

The digital transformation firm Reimagine also played a key role. “We were looking for a partner that had knowledge of both artificial intelligence and the Microsoft technology stack,” Crecco says. “They brought the development capabilities and knowledge of AI that complemented Patrice and his knowledge of prompt engineering, which is at the core of the solution.

“The implementation was very simple and smooth,” he adds. “Each time we faced roadblocks, like any project does, Microsoft was very responsive in guiding us and bringing the right knowledge and expertise.”

‘We are among the pioneers’

As well as offering increased productivity, not to mention cost savings on training, the tool sets Ageas apart as an employer in an industry where it can be tough to attract talent.

"We are among the pioneers – or maybe even the pioneer – in creating an AI-driven solution specifically designed to coach insurance sales agents. It’s given us a first-mover advantage, which allows us to use this as a key differentiator, even from a recruitment perspective," adds Gaucher.

Looking ahead, Ageas plans to broaden the Digital Coach’s scope beyond sales. The tool already offers training for recruitment scenarios, but the plan is to add features to help managers develop soft skills for difficult conversations like performance reviews.

For the immediate future, Gaucher is focused on driving adoption of sales training features. “The reality of our business in Asia is that we have very few full-time salespeople,” he says. “Encouraging engagement with the tool among part-time staff is probably the most challenging aspect when it comes to adoption.”

Fortunately, the Digital Coach has one advantage when it comes to adoption: it adds immediate value for its users – some might even say it’s fun. “People who use it are usually blown away,” Gaucher says.