“How May I Assist You Today?”: Using AI-Powered Chatbots to Streamline the School Admissions Process
Chatbots have been implemented on websites for years now, most often to handle basic inquiries and information for customers. These were primarily rules-based chatbots, which follow preset scripts and respond to specific keywords and phrases in order to field certain questions. The spread of AI has led to the adaptation of a new type of chatbot: AI-powered chatbots that use natural language processing to assess context, handle more complex inquiries, and improve over time. These types of chatbots hold the potential to make the admissions process for higher education better and more efficient.
The Benefits of Using Chatbots for Admissions
If you’re anything like me, the word “chatbot” evokes one specific image: a little box popping up in the bottom right corner of a webpage with a little dialogue bubble, asking if I need any help. But there are a wide range of functions that chatbots can perform to support your institution.
What Chatbots Can Do for Admissions
AI-powered chatbots can handle everything from customer (or in this case, student) services like answering questions and automated support, to marketing tasks like capturing leads, to demographic research like gathering audience preferences.
24/7 Inquiry Management and Support
Your potential students are likely going to have questions or concerns outside of regular, 9-5 business hours, and chatbots are a big advantage when it comes to ensuring those prospective enrollees feel seen and heard. Chatbots can function around the clock on your school’s website, allowing visitors to begin corresponding with you on their own time. The right chatbot can handle a large number of frequently asked questions about your programs, your admissions process, your campus, your amenities, and more. And if a question comes up that it is not able to handle, it can funnel the student directly to the best resource, whether it’s your financial aid director or program director or another staff member.
Increased Efficiency
A prospective student comes to your website or your Facebook profile with the goal of trying to find out specific information about your school. They could click around, reading through multiple pages to try and extract what they need—or they could interact with your chatbot, which can quickly and efficiently respond to their questions and give them a streamlined path forward. These chatbots, also sometimes referred to as virtual assistants, can also be leveraged to make processes like applying for admission and filling out the FAFSA less daunting, automating the procedure so that they can get all the data they need added correctly.
Automated Lead Generation
AI chatbots can be an incredible tool for capturing and logging lead information for prospective students. With AI tools able to collect things like where the person is located and what profile information is available, chatbots can initiate personalized messages, interact with the potential students, and potentially gather their name, their email, their phone number, and more.
Supported Scheduling
If getting potential students to visit your campus is an important part of your admissions process, chatbots can help you with that, too. By integrating your chatbot platform with calendar or appointment platforms, you can empower a chatbot to book students for campus tours, admissions interviews, financial aid meetings, and any other campus appointment that they might need. They can also provide nudges and reminders as the date gets close.
Personalized Interactions and Updates
In the ongoing conversation around and importance of personalization in the realm of digital marketing, chatbots can be an extremely effective tool. Because AI-powered chatbots can remember previous conversations and “learn” as they go, they can not only greet prospective students by name, but also provide individual touchpoints that make them feel noticed and engaged. Updating them on the status of their admissions application, nudging them to finish filling out important forms, reminding them of meetings and classes and start dates—all of these functions keep your leads connected and make it more likely that they will follow through on their enrollment.
How to Utilize Chatbots in Admissions
So you’re sold on the potential benefits of chatbots when it comes to empowering your admissions process; the next question is: how to implement it? There are quite a few platforms out there that you can use, so here are a few questions and considerations to keep in mind:
- How easy is it to learn and integrate? You don’t want to choose a chatbot that doesn’t meld with your other systems or that is too complicated to manage and update on the backend.
- What kinds of personalization options are there? You want it to be able to tailor its message based on the data available—the person’s name, their program, their enrollment status, etc.
- What does the user interface and dialogue flow look like?Make sure whichever platform you choose is easy for anyone to use and allows you to build a conversation model with a natural flow.
- What options are there for funneling students to human support? Whether it’s because of a unique question or just a personal preference, the chatbot platform should give users a clear option to connect to a real person.
- How accurate and reliable is it? It’s widely known that AI can sometimes very confidently present completely wrong information. You want to ensure that your chatbot isn’t going to be giving potential leads misinformation.
- Does it have multichannel options? Having a live chat or chatbot on your website is nice, but it’s only the first step. A good chatbot platform will also integrate with direct messaging, like on Facebook, and SMS messaging.
- What level of privacy and security does it offer? There is a continuing push for policies that protect consumer data. You’ll want to engage a chatbot platform that already has robust measures in place for protecting the privacy and data of your consumers.
AI-powered tools like chatbots can be truly transformative tools for schools, colleges, and universities, but it can also be overwhelming to implement if you aren’t sure how or where to really start. Partnering with a digital marketing agency with extensive knowledge on these tools can give you access to all the benefits without the struggle and headache of sorting it out by yourself. You can contact us here at EdwardsSchoen if you’re interested in learning more.
