On this episode of The Dialogue Architects, host Lauren Goerz speaks with Sapana Patel, Chief Information Officer at Spirit Airlines, about designing, scaling, and governing human‑machine conversations with strong data foundations.

Patel shares how her approach to technology leadership is driven by curiosity, creativity, and team reliability, likening technologists to artists shaping experiences through thoughtful design. She breaks down Spirit’s four AI layers—from enabling developers with Copilot and embedding AI helpers, to building in‑house conversational agents and predictive analytics—all with human verification at the core.

The conversation also explores how Spirit serves anonymous airline customers while keeping experiences secure, how metrics like solution ratio, revenue impact, uptime, stability, and security define success, and how her team uses an event‑driven services platform to deliver consistent data across customer touchpoints.

Patel closes with leadership insights on how to balance innovation with operational excellence, build trust across technical and business teams, and lead people through change in a fast‑evolving AI landscape.

00:00  Welcome and Guest Intro

Sapana Patel has served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Spirit Airlines since January 2026. She previously held the role of Senior Vice President, Solutions Architecture, where she led technology teams in close partnership with the business to transform Spirit’s technology stack.

Since joining Spirit in 2012, Patel has held several transformational leadership roles, including Senior Director of Solutions Delivery. Prior to Spirit, she held technology leadership positions at the University of Miami, Interval International, and Cargill, spanning more than 20 years. Patel began her aviation career with Northwest Airlines and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and a Master’s degree in Aviation from Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University.

About The Dialogue Architects

The Dialogue Architects is a podcast from Rasa, hosted by Lauren Goerz, exploring the craft and strategy behind designing conversational AI in the enterprise. Each episode brings together product leaders, designers, and engineers to unpack how dialogue is built, scaled, and governed in real‑world systems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Customer conversations hold an enormous amount of signal—but most enterprises aren’t measuring that signal with the depth or nuance it deserves.

In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, Lauren Goerz sits down with Etie Hertz, GM of Conversation Intelligence at ContentSquare, to explore how the acquisition of Loris is bringing together digital experience analytics and next‑generation conversational intelligence to transform customer support, retention, and lifetime value (LTV).

Etie shares how Loris evolved from a real‑time agent assist tool into a full conversational quality and insights platform used by both CX leaders and AI teams. She explains why traditional CSAT is insufficient—low-response, biased, and missing data—and how more sophisticated scoring systems can capture the full emotional arc of a conversation.

Lauren and Etie dive into Loris’s granular sentiment scale (-2 to +2) and their Conversational Quality (CQ) metric, which evaluates tone, empathy, friction, contact drivers, escalation patterns, and even churn prediction. They discuss what makes conversations work—mirroring tone, acknowledging emotion, reducing repetition—and where they fail.

The conversation also explores:

A practical, insightful episode for anyone building or governing conversational systems in CX, operations, or AI.

Etie Hertz is the GM of Conversation Intelligence at ContentSquare, where she leads the integration of Loris’s conversational insights platform with ContentSquare’s global digital experience analytics. With a background spanning product strategy, AI‑driven optimization, and enterprise CX, Etie focuses on extracting actionable signal from conversations—helping organizations understand sentiment, reduce friction, and directly impact customer lifetime value (LTV). Her work sits at the intersection of behavioral analytics, conversational design, and responsible AI.

(00:00) Meet Etie Hertz

The Dialogue Architects is a podcast from Rasa, hosted by Lauren Goerz, exploring the craft and strategy behind designing conversational AI in the enterprise. Each episode brings together product leaders, designers, and engineers to unpack how dialogue is built, scaled, and governed in real‑world systems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, Lauren Goerz sits down with Nick Thomson, General Manager at Got Bot in Cape Town, to unpack the realities of building and scaling high‑volume bots for commerce, support, and automation—especially in markets where WhatsApp is the primary customer channel.

Nick shares his journey from account management into NLP, APIs, JavaScript, and ultimately Python/Rasa, where hands‑on experimentation taught him how dialogue systems actually behave in production. Today, he leads teams that must balance generative‑AI client expectations with the real engineering work: reliable integrations, multi‑step workflows, rigid flows, regex‑based routing, fraud checks, and failover plans when client APIs or websites buckle under load.

Lauren and Nick dive into the architecture tradeoffs behind enterprise automation—fast vs. cheap vs. complex—how to design workflows that survive message‑volume spikes, and why diagramming in tools like Excalidraw or Miro remains the only reliable single source of truth across internal and client teams.

They also explore multi‑bot orchestration, agent‑to‑agent handoffs, the challenges of WhatsApp/Meta governance and bans, and Nick’s prediction that by 2026, companies will lose patience with autonomous agent failures and demand measurable ROI, stronger security, and far more system discipline.

A grounded, practical episode for anyone designing or governing real‑world conversational systems at scale.

Nick Thomson is the General Manager of Got Bot, a leading conversational AI and messaging automation company in Cape Town. With a background spanning account management, NLP, API integrations, and hands‑on Rasa development, Nick specializes in designing and scaling enterprise WhatsApp bots in one of the world’s highest‑volume messaging markets. At Got Bot, he oversees teams responsible for automation in retail, logistics, and commerce, balancing GenAI innovation with reliable workflow‑driven design. He is known for his practical approach to architecture, diagram‑driven collaboration, and governing multi‑bot ecosystems across brands and departments.

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) Welcome and guest intro

Links & Resources

• Nick Thomson – LinkedIn

The Dialogue Architects is a podcast from Rasa, hosted by Lauren Goerz, exploring the craft and strategy behind designing conversational AI in the enterprise. Each episode brings together technologists, designers, and product leaders to unpack how dialogue is built, scaled, and governed in real‑world systems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What can a playwright teach us about designing generative AI? In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, host Lauren Goerz welcomes conversation designer and playwright Soo‑Jin Lee for an in‑depth look at the creative and technical practices that shape AI behavior.

Soo‑Jin traces her journey from public‑school teaching and playwriting to building conversational search experiences powered by language models. She explains how modern conversation design goes far beyond scripting dialogue—instead involving system‑prompt design, content guardrails, metadata strategy, and rigorous human evaluation to ensure responses are accurate, safe, and aligned with brand values.

Using “smart search” as a real product example, Soo‑Jin breaks down how metadata underpins natural‑language queries and how short generated confirmation blurbs help users validate intent. She also demystifies the world of human raters, sharing what it takes to calibrate feedback, avoid bias, and make ethical decisions around inappropriate or sensitive content.

The conversation highlights the importance of collaboration between designers and engineers, and why hybrid creative‑technical thinkers are becoming essential in the GenAI era. Soo‑Jin closes by exploring the challenge of teaching AI humor—and her interest in designing bots that bring wholesome joy to user interactions.

This episode offers actionable insights for designers, engineers, and product leaders building trustworthy, user‑aligned generative AI systems.

(00:00) Welcome and guest introduction

Soo‑Jin Lee is a New York–based playwright and conversation designer whose work blends creative storytelling with practical AI design. Before entering the world of conversational AI, she spent years as a public‑school teacher and playwright—experiences that sharpened her understanding of dialogue, audience intention, and the nuances of human communication. Today, Soo‑Jin works across generative search and language‑model‑driven experiences, where she develops system prompts, designs content guardrails, and leads human‑evaluation workflows to ensure accuracy, safety, and clarity. Her multidisciplinary background allows her to approach AI design with both imagination and rigor, making her a distinctive voice in the evolution of generative AI and conversational UX.

The Dialogue Architects

 is a podcast from Rasa, hosted by Lauren Goerz, exploring the craft and strategy behind designing conversational AI in the enterprise. Each episode brings together technologists, designers, and product leaders to unpack how dialogue is built, scaled, and governed in real‑world systems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode Description

Trust isn’t something you add to voice AI at the end—it has to be designed in from the start.

In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, Lauren Goerz, Staff Product Marketing Manager at Rasa, sits down with Ludwig Sickert to explore how high-trust voice AI systems are built in real enterprise environments. Drawing on his journey from IBM Watson AI to co-founding Logen.AI, Ludwig shares how conversational systems have evolved from simple FAQ bots into deeply integrated, production-grade voice agents.

The conversation examines why trust is especially fragile in voice interfaces and what teams must do to preserve it. Lauren and Ludwig discuss the importance of integrating voice agents with core IT systems, defining a consistent brand voice, and validating AI outputs to ensure reliability at scale. They also break down common implementation challenges—from handling complex business processes to balancing flexibility with governance.

Looking ahead, Ludwig shares his perspective on the future of voice AI, including emerging opportunities around memory and continuity across conversations, and what those capabilities will require from a trust and design standpoint.

This episode is essential listening for product leaders, designers, and engineers building voice AI systems where accuracy, confidence, and user trust are non-negotiable.

[00:00] Introduction and guest welcome
[00:43] Ludwig’s career journey
[02:01] Building high-trust voice agents
[04:01] Challenges and solutions in conversational AI
[07:06] Voice AI implementation strategies
[15:05] Ensuring high-trust AI systems
[18:43] Technical and business considerations
[26:51] The future of voice AI and memory
[30:12] Closing thoughts and farewell

Ludwig Sickert – LinkedIn
Logen.AI
Learn more about trustworthy conversational AI at Rasa: rasa.com

The Dialogue Architects is a podcast from Rasa, hosted by Lauren Goerz, exploring the craft and strategy behind designing conversational AI in the enterprise. Each episode brings together technologists, designers, and product leaders to unpack how dialogue is built, scaled, and governed in real-world systems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trust is not a feature—it’s an outcome of good design, clear intent, and disciplined execution.

In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, we sit down with Hans Joachim Belz to explore what it really takes to design conversational AI systems that users—and organizations—can trust.

Drawing on extensive experience across large enterprises including Deutsche Telekom, E.ON, and DHL, Belz shares lessons learned from building and advising conversational systems in complex, regulated environments.

The conversation covers the evolution of conversational design, the role of UX fundamentals in an LLM-driven world, and how teams can balance innovation with risk management. We discuss why disambiguation and clarifying questions remain essential, how trust differs across text and voice interfaces, and what designers should consider when working with multi-agent architectures.

Belz also reflects on what past technology revolutions can teach us about today’s AI moment—offering a grounded, experience-driven perspective for teams building conversational AI that must scale responsibly.

This episode is essential listening for UX designers, product leaders, and AI practitioners focused on creating conversational systems that are reliable, controllable, and human-centered.

[00:00] Introduction to The Dialogue Architects
[00:07] Meet Hans Joachim Belz: From UX Consultant to Conversational AI Engineer
[00:58] Foundations of Conversational Design
[03:21] The Importance of T-Shaped Skills in UX
[04:33] Challenges and Opportunities with Large Language Models
[06:04] Balancing Risk and Innovation in Conversational AI
[12:57] Disambiguation and the Role of Clarifying Questions
[31:00] Voice vs. Text: Designing for Different Modalities
[35:26] The Future of Multi-Agent Architectures
[37:43] Lessons from Past Technological Revolutions
[39:48] Closing Thoughts and Farewell

Hans Joachim Belz – LinkedIn
 

Learn more about trustworthy conversational AI at rasa.com

About The Dialogue Architects

The Dialogue Architects is a podcast from Rasa exploring the craft and strategy behind designing conversational AI enterprises. Each episode brings together technologists, designers, and product leaders to unpack how dialogue is built, scaled, and governed in real-world systems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, host Lauren Goerz welcomes Alan Nichol, co-founder and CTO of Rasa, to unpack his journey from physics PhD to becoming a pioneer in conversational AI.

Alan reflects on the early chatbot experiments that seeded Rasa’s creation, the lessons learned from the first wave of conversational interfaces, and why today’s AI assistants demand a more thoughtful approach—one grounded in user trust, governance, and real-world problem solving.

Their conversation explores:

• Rasa’s origin story—from side projects to powering global enterprise assistants
• Why early chatbots failed and how modern systems must evolve
• How enterprises can design scalable, maintainable conversational architectures
• The shift from scripted flows to adaptive, AI-driven dialogues
• Why observability, governance, and user-centric design matter more than model size
• How companies can avoid the AI hype cycle and focus on what users actually need
• Actionable advice for teams who want to get started with Rasa

Alan provides guidance for enterprises navigating rapid AI innovation—and a grounded vision of what it takes to build human-machine conversations that truly work. Clarity, responsibility, and building AI that solves real problems.

 

Episode Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction to Dialogue Architects
(00:07) Meet Alan Nichol: From Physicist to CTO of Rasa
(00:42) The Origin Story of Rasa
(01:13) Early Challenges and Innovations in Conversational AI
(03:03) Building Bots and the Evolution of NLP
(07:40) The Rise of Rasa and Open Source Contributions
(12:36) Company Culture and Hiring Philosophy at Rasa
(15:42) Maintaining Integrity and Trust in AI Development
(19:18) Early Bets and the Evolution of NLP Classifiers
(20:02) Challenges with Classification Paradigms
(24:14) The Shift to LLMs and Honest AI
(25:20) The Overuse of Conversational Interfaces
(28:06) AI Assisted Coding and Abstractions
(31:19) The Future of Conversational AI
(37:58) Advice for Enterprises and Final Thoughts

Links & Resources:

• Rasa Official Site
• Alan Nichol on LinkedIn
• Lauren Goerz on LinkedIn

Subscribe & Follow The Dialogue Architects on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Apple Podcasts

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In a world powered by AI and automation, conversational AI is now a critical business function. On The Dialogue Architects, host Lauren Goerz brings together industry leaders and practitioners to explore how to design scalable, trustworthy conversations that enterprises can rely on—today and into the future. Presented by Rasa.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.