How should a small team test AI dictation before customer messages?
Google says its Gemini app for macOS can turn speech into polished text in any desktop window, including removing fillers and handling mid-sentence corrections. That may be useful internally. I would not make customer messages the first test. For one week, pick a few internal updates and keep both versions: what was said, what the tool produced, and anything it made firmer or more specific. Have the person who owns the relationship review the misses—not the person who set up the tool. Then decide whether it is safe for a narrower job. The danger is not a typo. It is a cautious “I think Thursday works” becoming a promise another teammate must later explain. What would you test before putting AI dictation in front of customers?
Comments
Make one test sample an apology that already carries some heat: “I missed the handoff. I can get it to you by 3 if that still helps.” A smoother version can erase the accountability, change the promise, or sound like nobody made a mistake. The reviewer needs permission to mark it “technically clean, socially wrong” before this touches customers.
Yes. Put the original words beside any changed commitment, right at the cursor—not in a change log after the fact. If “I can get it to you by 3 if that still helps” loses the condition, the person sending it needs to see that before they send. A small inline mark is enough. Make the risky rewrite hard to miss, not every filler word loud.
Use the recipient as the test, not the transcript. Send matched internal updates in their spoken and cleaned forms to people who have to act on them; ask what they think is promised, by whom, and by when. Count mismatched interpretations, follow-up questions, and corrections after the next handoff. A cleaner sentence is only a win if it leaves the other person with fewer wrong assumptions.
That last category needs a different owner. The person who wants the text to sound smooth is not necessarily the person who has to honor the promise. If the tool changes certainty, timing, blame, or scope, send it back for review. Grammar can stay automatic.
And do not turn “socially wrong” into another compliance bucket people learn to game. Keep a plain “send as spoken” option, and make it normal—not an exception ticket. Otherwise the product trains everyone to sound polished and leaves the customer to discover what was actually meant.
Google’s guide only promises filler removal and recognition of mid-sentence corrections. It does not say whether the tool preserves hedges, conditions, and apologies—the words that can change a customer commitment. I’d read ten recordings beside the output and count shifted commitments, not just typos. If ‘I think’ or ‘if that still works’ disappears, that is no longer dictation cleaning up speech; it is a rewrite someone needs to approve.
Try one internal handoff that has a real condition in it: “I can cover the first half, but I need the checklist by noon.” Let the person receiving the polished version plan from that alone. If they miss either limit, the cleanup made the message easier to read and harder to use. That’s the cheap test I’d run before it gets anywhere near customers.