Axonify Launches Max Coach, Giving Every Frontline Employee a Way to Practice High-Stakes Conversations Before Real Interactions

Axonify, the AI-Powered Frontline Enablement Platform, announced Max Coach, a new roleplay capability built natively into the Axonify platform. The tool adds another powerful and scalable layer that gives frontline employees a realistic, voice-based way to practice the critical conversations their job depends on, all without taxing managers.

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Max Coach delivers AI-powered practice sessions before a shift begins – right in employees’ workflows, building the confidence, quick thinking, and communication skills needed for high-stakes moments like customer service, sales conversations, and compliance-sensitive interactions. First demonstrated at the ATD 2026 International Conference in May, Max Coach has since been refined through an invitation-only pilot program. It builds on Max Assistant, Axonify’s AI chatbot that gives frontline workers company-approved answers to anything they need, when they need it during a shift.

Max Coach addresses a gap highlighted in Axonify’s 2026 Frontline Operations Report, which found that while 87% of leaders believe information reaches frontline workers effectively, only 56% of those workers say they consistently receive what they need to perform. Role-playing different scenarios is one of the most reliable ways to close that divide – but it is often bypassed. It takes time and typically depends on manager availability, making the training inconsistent across locations at best.

“Practice is the thing every frontline leader knows works but almost nobody has figured out how to implement at scale,” said Melissa Burghardt, CEO of Axonify. “Max Coach unlocks this challenge – giving every employee, on every shift, in their own language, the autonomy and tools to practice and hone the hardest parts of their job before a customer is standing in front of them.”

What Max Coach Changes for Frontline Teams

• Distributed frontline workforces gain a consistent, scalable practice system for employees to rehearse scenarios on-demand. Employees converse with Max Coach to emulate realistic job interactions and get feedback, but in a low-stakes environment that helps build confidence.
• Practice becomes a connected step, not a separate, one-off activity. Max Coach is integrated into Axonify’s Learning pathways, so scenarios come directly after the training content they reinforce, and employees can start a session on their own anytime they want extra practice. The result: a closed loop of training, coaching, and reinforcement.
• Scorecards improve frontline performance and confidence over time. Max Coach gives employees repeated cycles for development and improvement tied to the skills their role requires. After each session, employees receive a Scorecard that summarizes what they did well and the specific behaviors to improve in the next attempt. These also provide relevant managers and leaders with objective, consistent readiness data on employees instead of subjective observations.
• Leaders can build custom brand-aligned coaching scenarios for specific employee groups. Through Coach Builder, the Axonify admin interface, non-technical admins can easily build custom scenarios with AI assistance and deliver them to defined teams across thousands of locations at once, with full control over content and targeting.
• Multi-language accessibility extends readiness programs across entire frontline workforces. Employees can practice scenarios in 24 languages, removing participation gaps historically caused by language barriers.
• Frontline Managers can focus their energy on higher-value coaching once employees feel practiced and ready to deliver. This helps managers prioritize closing critical performance gaps and developing their people, rather than covering the basics.

Connecting Learning and Coaching to Performance

Max Coach entered early access in June 2026 with organizations across retail, grocery, telecommunications, financial services and automotive, building scenarios that span new hire onboarding, difficult customer conversations, and product sales.

“Max Coach isn’t a stand-alone tool bolted onto the frontline experience. It’s built directly into the Axonify platform, so every coaching interaction feeds the same system that builds knowledge and reinforces it over time,” said Pamela DeLuca, chief product officer at Axonify. “That’s what turns confidence into consistent performance. Frontline leaders can coach, measure, and improve their teams in one connected platform, instead of managing another disconnected tool that doesn’t tie back to business results.”

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