At Being Guided we are deeply interested in how Design Thinking can result in AI increasing customer experience through every stage of an initial digital journey between buyer and seller, where success is vital to a subsequent human journey in a buying and selling cycle.

I see these journeys as our Design Principle 02: Meaningful Journeys.

This follows on from our Design Principle 01: Firece Reduction. This means: simplify everything tech. Subtract before you add.

Empathy Algorithm Grid (EAG)

To quote Hans Van Dam¹: "We need a new way to think about AI Assistants. Not as tools. But as touchpoints of trust. This is where the Empathy Algorithm Grid (EAG) comes in."

So, what is an Empathy Algorithm Grid and how can this create a Meaningful Journey between a buyer and seller, where at Being Guided the conversation starts digitially with Salespeak, our 'AI Sales Brain' technology partner? See Journal article: Guided Selling.

The Empathy Algorithm Grid (EAG) is a framework developed by the Conversation Design Institute², an organisation dedicated to advancing the field of conversation design for AI-powered systems such as chatbots and voice assistants.

With Salespeak AI Sales Brain we are focused on maximising the digital conversation between buyer and seller by iterating the conversation to transform inbound enquiries into Meaningful Journeys at these crucial early stages of the buying and selling cycle.

As illustrated above, Empathy Algorithm Grid (EAG) has two forces:

X-axis: Empathy - from Transactional to Relational
Y-axis: Algorithm - from Low Automation to High Automation

Each quadrant tells a different story:

Bottom Left. Discovering: You’re just getting started. A few basic flows. Maybe a FAQ bot. Low empathy, low automation. You’re learning — but still invisible.

Top Left. Squandering: You’ve invested heavily in automation but forgot the human. Customers avoid your Assistant. It’s fast, but soulless. You’ve scaled something nobody wants to talk to.

Bottom Right. Wandering: You’ve created warm, novel experiences — but there’s no structure. No business case. Delight without discipline. Poets without builders.

Top Right. Leading: This is where the magic happens. Builders and poets working together. Automation meets empathy. Systems that scale and resonate.

When these forces are aligned, cost to serve goes down — not because you’re cutting corners, but because you’re earning trust. The craft is in the pacing: evolving empathy and algorithm side by side. That’s how you get results that last.

That’s not a destination. It’s a path. In Being Guided terms: it is creating a Meaningful Journey.

If your AI Assistant handles adult-level complexity, it can’t speak like a toddler. Longer journeys. Higher stakes. More emotion. As systems grow up, their language must grow with them:

• Clear over clever.
• Confident over rushed.
• Calm over robotic.
• Phrases like:
  “I can imagine that’s frustrating.”
  “Here’s exactly what we’ll do next.”
  “You’re in the right place.”

These aren’t scripts. They’re scaffolding.

At Being Guided we see that digital conversations need to follow the same format that human conversations follow in buyer-seller engagements: from Receptivity through to Truth.

With the Salespeak AI we work with customers to set the AIU Discussion Tone, Message Length and Other Instructions for the AI, as illustrated below.

References

1. van Dam, H. (2025, May 9).The Empathy Algorithm Grid: How Builders and Poets Will Shape the Future of AI. Power of the Poets.
   https://hansvandam.substack.com/p/the-empathy-algorithm-grid-how-builders
2. Conversation Design Institute (2025). About the Conversation Design Institute.
   https://www.conversationdesigninstitute.com/about