Conversational AI · Design · Strategy
Maaike Coppens is an internationally recognised conversational AI designer, published author and keynote speaker. She has spent more than a decade helping ambitious teams build AI that people trust, use and come back to.
Trusted by teams & brands including
About
years designing conversational AI
Maaike works where AI meets human communication. As VP of Product at OpenDialog AI, she turns complex multi-agent technology into award-winning products: enterprise AI agents that hold up in insurance, healthcare and other demanding, regulated environments.
Before that, she spent years in the trenches of voice and chat: designing Alexa skills and Google actions for Fortune 500 companies, building multilingual agents for 4,100 hotels, and mentoring the next generation of conversation designers.
She loves the unglamorous work that decides whether AI actually ships: knowledge audits, taxonomy creation, evaluation frameworks, and the conversation design that ties them together.
“AI will not fix a broken user experience. AI and UX are, in effect, strategic allies.”
She writes, speaks and consults in English, French, Dutch and German. She is also the founder of DigiBadge, a French digital-citizenship startup for young people.
Work with Maaike
Most GenAI pilots never make it to production. The ones that do get the knowledge, the conversation and the evidence right before the technology. That is Maaike's home turf.
Where do AI agents create real value for you, and is your knowledge ready to power them? A structured audit of your use cases, content and knowledge bases, ending in a roadmap you can defend.
Your agent is only as good as the knowledge behind it. Maaike designs the taxonomies, content models and knowledge architecture that make RAG and AI agents accurate and worth trusting.
End-to-end design of conversational and multi-agent experiences for regulated industries like insurance and healthcare. Compliance is a design decision, not a disclaimer.
Launching is easy. Proving it works is the job. Evaluation frameworks, A/B tests and quality gates that turn "it seems to work" into measurable quality, from pilot through production.
Substantive talks on conversational AI, agent design and the future of human-machine interaction, grounded in a decade of shipping real products.
Hands-on Conversation Design Sprints and team upskilling, including the AI literacy your organisation now owes its people under the EU AI Act.
Speaking
From international conference stages to executive boardrooms, Maaike speaks about conversational AI with the authority of someone who designs and ships production agents every day. Expect clear thinking, honest lessons and ideas your audience can use on Monday morning.
Recently on stage: keynote at UX-MEET : IA Experience 2024 (UX-REPUBLIC). Watch it on the Media page.
Invite Maaike to speakHer take, in writing: Conversation design in the era of AI agents →
Selected work
Enterprise · Insurance
End-to-end design of a production agent suite at OpenDialog AI: onboarding and underwriting, re-engagement, claims handling and real-time policy questions, all deployed in a fully regulated environment.
Hospitality · Multilingual
A multilingual B2C conversational agent serving 4,100 hotels. It won the WorldWide Hospitality Award.
Voice · Fortune 500
Lead conversational AI designer on Alexa skills and Google actions for Fortune 500 brands with XAPP AI, and internationalised award-winning voice apps with labworks.io.
Research · Non-profit
UX expertise for mission-driven organisations, bringing user research rigour to conversational and digital experiences.
Want the full story? Visit the private portfolio 🔒 for detailed case studies, shared on request.
Books
The French-language reference on designing chatbots, phonebots and voice assistants: choosing the right conversational approach, training your teams and building experiences on real user research.
A hands-on workbook for practitioners designing voice-first experiences.
Booking & enquiries
For consulting, keynotes, conferences and workshops: get in touch and Maaike will reply personally.