Can AI Roleplay Bring Us Closer Together as Humans?
It might seem strange to say that I built an AI platform to bring humans closer together. Artificial intelligence — the thing many people fear will make us more distant, more isolated, more replaceable — as a tool for human connection?
Stay with me. I'll tell you what happened in Budapest last week.
18 consultants, one question
I had the joy of training 18 young consultants from an international strategy consulting firm. They came together in Budapest for what the firm calls "advanced consulting skills." All in their late twenties, all with about two years of consulting experience. They know how to analyze, structure, and present. They're good at it.
But here's the question I kept coming back to: what is an advanced consulting skill in a world where Claude and ChatGPT can do your analysis — and do it pretty well?
In my opinion, it's the ability to interact with clients and interview partners in a way that goes beyond ticking boxes, running through a questionnaire, or having a surface-level conversation. It's reading people. Building trust. Listening — genuinely — and building on what you hear.
That's what we practiced. Not with a lecture. With conversations.
Why Vollpension
I didn't want to use a generic business case. I wanted something specific, something they probably don't know, something that would challenge their assumptions about what a business is.
For those of you who've been to Vienna: you might know Vollpension. It's an amazing café — two locations now — where grandmothers and grandfathers bake the most incredible cakes. You can enjoy them there or bring them home. But Vollpension is much more than a bakery. It's a meeting point between generations. A place where elderly people who were lonely find purpose, structure, and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Where baking becomes joy — for them and for us who eat those wonderful cakes.
Vollpension is a social business. Not a charity, not a pure for-profit. Their social mission — fighting elderly poverty through intergenerational connection — is at least as important as making a profit, if not more important. I'm very grateful to them for what they've built, and I think we don't talk enough about the loneliness of our elders.
So I built a scenario on RolePlays.ai with three personas the consultants could talk to.
Edeltraud — a 74-year-old grandmother who bakes at Vollpension. Talking to her helps you understand what it actually means for one of the seniors to work there. The €470 she earns lets her visit her grandchildren. The young baristas feel like family. Her stories are strategic intelligence — if you listen.
Veronika — the operational heart of Vollpension. Background in gastronomy, understands kitchens and restaurants better than most. She lives in the operational detail. She knows what it actually takes to run this place.
Florian — the visionary. He has a thousand ideas in two minutes. He throws them at you to see what sticks. If it doesn't stick, no problem — he has twenty more. A completely different person than Veronika.
The consultants received an RFP to help Vollpension with their expansion. As part of preparing their proposal, they could speak to Veronika and Florian. On Wednesday, midway through the week, they received an email with a strategic pivot — a shift from physical franchise expansion to a hybrid licensing model. Then they spoke to Florian.
What actually happened
Good consultants go prepared into every meeting. Even with an AI persona. So on Monday, some teams showed up with what must have been 80 questions. That's how you prepare in consulting — you build a questionnaire. Very often too long, and you never get through it. I remember that from my own consulting days.
One team was really thorough. They got through most of their questions with Veronika. But they just went through the list. They didn't build on the answers. The feedback was clear: you went through all the questions, but you didn't build a relationship, and you didn't go any deeper to understand what actually drives Veronika.
Another team was a bit cheeky. They took Veronika into the kitchen and had a couple of shots together. Yes, even that is possible on RolePlays.ai — I was surprised myself. And they managed to build a genuinely good relationship with her. They understood what drives her. That was a breakthrough.
Then came Wednesday. Florian.
The consultants came prepared again, especially because they'd just received the pivot email. They had their questions about the shift in strategy. But Florian is not the person who answers questions. He wants to play creative ping-pong. He throws an idea at you and wants to see if it sticks. If not, he has ten more. Twenty more. Thirty more. That's how Florian works.
If you ask him a structured question about strategy, he's off on three different tangents. It doesn't matter to him. So you need a different approach. You need to match his energy, play that creative ping-pong, lock him down on one topic — and only then will he start to see you as an equal and trust you enough to go deeper.
Not surprisingly, two of the three teams scored lower with Florian than with Veronika. Because what worked with Veronika did not work with Florian.
Three lessons in 90 minutes
What came out of roughly 90 minutes of conversations with Veronika and Florian?
First: all three teams failed to address the social business aspect. They treated Vollpension like any other business. The grandmothers, the loneliness, the intergenerational mission — footnotes, not the strategic core. The feedback made this clear. And they felt it.
Second: what works with one person does not work with another. If one stakeholder is happy to answer your detailed questions, the other might not be. You need to read these situations — and adapt in real time.
Third: in any conversation, you need to build trust by listening and building on what the other person actually tells you. Not running through your list. Building on their answers. Following the thread they're offering, even when it takes you somewhere you didn't plan to go.
I could have told them all of this in five minutes. Treat social businesses differently. Adapt to your stakeholder. Build on the answers you get. Yes, I could have said that. And they probably would have forgotten it a minute later.
By practicing it — by experiencing what happens when you don't adapt, by feeling the persona shut down when you ignore what they just told you — it sticks. I hope so, anyway.
The bigger point
This is why I built RolePlays.ai. Not because I think AI should replace human interaction. The opposite. Because I think well-designed AI practice can enhance human connection.
These 18 consultants from all over the world learned that a social business is fundamentally different from a standard company — and that ignoring the human mission means missing the strategy. They experienced that they can't treat every interview partner the same — they have to understand who's sitting across from them. And they discovered that a good conversation always builds on the answers you get, even if that means forgetting the long list of questions sitting beside you.
Those are deeply human skills. Empathy. Adaptability. Listening. The AI didn't teach them those skills. The AI gave them a safe space to discover where those skills are strong and where they break down — before a real client conversation where the stakes are real.
I wonder how you use AI. And I especially wonder how you think about the role of AI in human connection.
Drop me a comment, or write me an email. I'd genuinely love to hear.
This post is based on a Coffee & Coaching episode. Listen to the full episode or read the full data analysis with team scores and detailed feedback on the RolePlays.ai blog.
If you're interested in trying the Vollpension scenario yourself, drop me an email — I'm happy to send you a link.