Philipp Hänggi

Linguistics is where I started. I did a Ph.D. in conversation analysis, which is the empirical study of talk and social interaction. Think about all the subtle things we do when we talk and engage in conversation — how we take turns, repair misunderstandings, or adjust our language based on context. I then decided the theoretical armchair wasn't for me, and I wanted to apply some of those principles to actual products. I moved into industry first as a Language Engineer at Apple, and most recently I was at UBS, leading conversational UX for the bank's multilingual GenAI assistant. The work was essentially helping them migrate from legacy, deterministic chatbot and automated phone systems to LLM-powered conversational interfaces. Anyone working in this space knows that migration is nontrivial, and the lessons from that project shape how I think about agent design now.

I'm an Agentic Experience Specialist in the FDE CoE. My particular slice sits at the intersection of conversational AI, UX, and linguistics, with a focus on voice experience design. What that really comes down to is treating spoken conversation itself as a design material. Beyond direct client work, I support builders globally and help shape product direction by feeding field learnings back into the teams building Agentforce.

I enjoy speaking other languages and learning how they work, multilingualism changes the angle from which I see the world. I also have an unhealthy basketball obsession (considering a pilgrimage to catch a Sixers game this year, might be LeBron's last dance!)