VirtualSpeech

What VirtualSpeech is

VirtualSpeech is an AI practice platform for soft skills. Teams rehearse real conversations, presentations and coaching sessions with AI avatars and virtual audiences, and get scored feedback within seconds. It is sold mainly to organizations, from enterprise L&D teams rolling training out across sites and regions to universities and business schools building employability into a curriculum, and it also sells self-paced courses such as Public Speaking Mastery to individuals. The company behind it is VirtualSpeech Ltd.

The pitch starts from a problem the home page states bluntly: "Most workplace training doesn't truly change behavior." Employees sit through a workshop, take notes and walk back into the same conversations they struggled with before. VirtualSpeech's answer is a loop of four steps: practice, feedback, reflect, apply. The idea is that a learner walks into the real conversation or speech "having already had it a dozen times".

The practice modes

The home page names four ways to practice. Roleplays are conversations with an AI character that responds and pushes back. Public Speaking puts the learner in front of a virtual audience, anywhere from a one-to-one pitch to a conference stage. Skills Coaching works through a real situation with an AI coach and ends with a written plan. Exercises are short drills on a single skill, most of them under ten minutes. On top of these, Custom Roleplays let an organization build scenarios around its own products, policies and personas.

The use cases on the solutions menu give a sense of the scenarios. Leadership and management covers feedback, performance conversations and coaching. Sales covers discovery calls, objections and negotiation, which is where VirtualSpeech meets business and marketing skills training. Customer service covers difficult customers, complaints and de-escalation. Healthcare covers patient communication and clinical conversations, and language practice lets people rehearse real work conversations in a second language. A Training Library holds ready-made scenarios an admin can assign on day one.

How the feedback works

Feedback is where the product spends most of its effort. The home page says every session is scored against named criteria, each with a written explanation of what the person said and what to do differently, rather than "a percentage and a thumbs up". The criteria change with the scenario: a difficult conversation is scored on things like acknowledging concerns and non-confrontational language, an interview on clarity, composure and knowledge of the topic.

The example on the home page is a difficult conversation about missed targets, scored 8.5 overall. Under asking open-ended questions, the note reads "You consistently gave Rob space to explain rather than assuming you knew the cause". Under non-confrontational language, the learner is credited for describing observable impacts instead of labeling behavior and for collaborative phrases like "we will" and "let's". Alongside the written notes sit delivery metrics such as hesitations, speaking pace in words per minute and a clarity percentage. Learners then see progress across sessions and where the gaps still are.

For L&D teams and schools

For organizations, VirtualSpeech adds a layer of data on top of the practice. Skills Analytics measures workplace skills across individuals and teams, and Admin and Reporting lets an organization assign, track and report on training across the whole company. The product runs on demand in the browser, with nothing to download and no hardware to buy, on a laptop or a tablet, and the company describes it as the fastest option to roll out. For teams that want more immersion, there is an optional VR and mixed reality mode on Meta Quest and compatible headsets, aimed at high-stakes, high-pressure moments. The support menu covers a VR app guide, supported headsets and VR device management.

For education, the platform offers repeatable practice at interviews and presentations built into a curriculum. Testimonials on the home page come from both sides. Gema Molero of IE University says "VirtualSpeech has become a vital tool for communication and soft skills training at IE University." Astrid Baumgartner of Swisscom says "The flexibility to design our own prompts has been great for developing essential soft skills", and Elizaveta Pavlova of Paris Business School writes "It was great to see a high level of engagement and growth in such a short time."

Public Speaking Mastery, the individual course

The clearest view of the learner experience is the Public Speaking Mastery course. It is online and self-paced, with 3.5 hours of learning and practice, videos, quizzes and case studies. The course page lists 6 online activities and quizzes and 7 interactive practice exercises with AI feedback in its summary, and 8 AI-enhanced practice exercises in its "What's included" list. It runs in 10 modules, from why public speaking matters and audience analysis through planning the speech and its delivery, audience questions, preparation, overcoming nerves and advanced delivery, and ends with a speech in a TEDx-styled theater.

The practice exercises are the distinctive part. Eye contact training uses gamification and heatmaps to show where attention should go. Impromptu speech training has the learner talk about a random slide every 30 seconds or answer random Table Topic questions. Other exercises cover dealing with sound and visual distractions such as ringing phones and bright lighting, warm-ups, controlling emotional state, and a conference presentation to around 100 people. Learners can upload their own slides and notes, get AI-generated questions based on the transcript of what they said, and receive speech analysis on eye contact, pace and filler words, plus a listenability score. The facilitators are Helen Hooper, the Curriculum Lead, an entrepreneur, storyteller and learning designer, and Hannah Britt, a learning designer with a background in visual storytelling and creative media.

Price, certificate and refund

The course page shows US $45 per month under an "Access all courses" heading, with 12 months access to this course. Payment is by credit card, debit card or PayPal on the VirtualSpeech site, and invoice or other methods are available by contacting the company, which also handles purchases for teams. After enrollment, the course is available 24/7 in a standard browser; the FAQ names Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Edge.

On completion, learners receive a Certificate of Achievement that can be added to the Certifications section of a LinkedIn profile or to a resume. The course page labels the course "CPD Accredited" and lists 5 CPD credits or hours. The refund policy is a full refund within 7 days of purchase if the course does not meet expectations.

Organization pricing is not published; rollout options and pricing are discussed on a demo call, where the company builds a scenario around what a team finds hardest. The company says it replies within one working day.

Results the company reports

VirtualSpeech publishes its own outcome figures: a 25.9% average soft skill improvement after using the product, more than 350k completed AI-powered practice sessions, 93% of learners who would recommend it to a colleague, and 95% who said immersive practice helped them get ready for real-world situations. Its featured case is Deutsche Telekom, which trained 1,200 employees with VirtualSpeech; the company says Deutsche Telekom's L&D team reported a 20% average skill increase after employees spent as little as 30 minutes in immersive practice scenarios.

Who it suits

VirtualSpeech suits L&D teams that want to move soft skills training from passive workshops to active practice and measure the change, especially for managers, sales teams, customer service staff and healthcare workers. Universities and business schools get a repeatable way to prepare students for interviews and presentations. Individuals who want to get better at presenting can buy the public speaking course without involving an employer, at a published monthly price.

It is a narrower fit for organizations whose main need is technical, product or compliance training, since the platform is built around communication practice rather than knowledge delivery. Learners who want a human coach in the room may also find AI feedback a different experience from a live workshop, though the scored notes are specific and written.