Case
Around 20 000 students study in business university through a year. Major part of university’s profit depends on quantity of students under contract so administration is interested to keep the major part of them before end of the training program.
They also need to be in touch with all students, collect feedback to maintain university reputation and to attract more people to get a degree in it.
This institution is a modern one so they decided to use modern technologies to fulfill all these tasks. They turned to Effebot company and its CEO and founder Rinat Shamsiev for consulting, marketing insights and technical support.
Problem
Administration tries to automatize most of interactions with students — to remind about exams, payments, to conduct surveys or organize interviews with graduates, to provide promotions to attract an interest of a potential audience.
Before university do it all by sending SMS or emails. It is cheap but not entirely flawless: the main disadvantage of these instruments is simple — students don’t see a message or just ignore it. Letters often went to spam folder or didn’t reach the addressees.
That is why level of students’ awareness still was on a very low level and promotion didn’t provide required number of leads — conversion equals around 0,1-0,2%.
Task
Automatize the major part of administration’s interactions with students by bulk calls.
Solution
Mr. Rinat Shamsiev offered to test bulk voice calls service provider instead of text messages: according to their conjecture, call is much harder to miss than SMS or email.
He suggested to apply robocalls to four different tasks requires to inform a lot of contacts in a short time:
1 Promotion of educational programs
It was the most massive task — the robot needed to call 47309 numbers and offer the MBA educational program for potential students.
Yet, solution was easy: manager loaded the phone numbers base and pre-recorded clip, add IVR menu with opportunity to connect with a university’s expert and launch the mailing.
Example of a message
Looking for Best Distance and Online MBA in India? Enroll with India's ranked 1 online and distance MBA program from NMIMS University and get placed in Fortune 500 companies. Press 1 to know more.
2 Payment reminder
These calls aimed at those students who already finished one semester and didn’t pay for the next yet.
Statistically, those students had two common problems: regularly forget they need to pay and have difficulties with the procedure. So in IVR menu manager add two options — to get a link for the payment page to email and to get a consultation of an expert.
For the rest, solution was the similar to the previous one: load the base, an audio clip, IVR menu and launch calls.
Example of a message
Welcome to the University! Late fees for re-registration to be applied from 1st of February. Kindly complete your registration for next semester before 31st of January to avoid late fees.
To receive registration link to your email press 1, to receive assistance for registration press 2.
3 Collecting feedback
These task requires extensive replies, so manager add a function of a voice recognition and a function “Any word” — thanks to it the robot continues a dialog only when respondent finished to answer.
IVR menu was designed more branched in case of necessity to segment feedback by different programs. It was carried out by keypads to avoid excessive variability of programs’ names.
The rest process was the same: manager needed to choose numbers for calls and add audio records.
Example of a message
Thank you for being student of our University. We would like to inform you that we have started admission for new batches enjoyed referral benefits. All you need is to share your reference with us.
To share a feedback of distance MBA programs press 1, of excutative MBA programs press 2, of MSC program press 3, of distance graduation program press 4. If you want to know more about referral policy press 5. If you want to stop receiving update from University press 9.
4 Exams or other events reminders
This regular task requires only some similar audio clips and all available phone number bases.
All of them was loaded before the first mailing and went through preliminary moderation. So it takes only few clicks and minutes to start bulk calls — it is important when the matter is really urgent.
Example of a message
Hi, dear student. Remember that you have a Control Theory exam today at 2PM. Check the number of the auditorium in your schedule. Good luck!
What was automatized?
Calling a huge amount of numbers in a short time
Informing potential students about offers
Reminding current students about important events
Screening out those who are interested in university
Implementation
Effebot started to call right after manager pushed the launch button.
When someone picked up the phone, the robot played audio record and when finished offer to select the next option by keypads. For example, by pushing a button a student could to transfer a call to the university expert.
After all bulk voice calls were made the robot sent statistics details (how many answered, what answer they chose, etc.) to the personal account. So administration could measure the real efficiency of calls.
Result
67 682
calls were made
27 170
students recieved
a message
13 386 ₹
were spent
48
new reviews were
placed on the site
97
new hot leads
the university got
82
students pay for
the next semester
right after a call
The robot fulfilled all tasks in few hours — much faster than any manager can do.
Average conversion on answering the call was equal more than 40%. It indicates that more students got important information on time. At the same time, university managers didn’t have to waste their time trying to reach everyone for informing an another urgent matter.
Such results also influenced on the university rates: administration got more leads, reviews and timely payments.
Effebot allowed to make messages more personal and individualized: manager can use audio with professors’ voices and add an function for open answer to let students speak freely and not only choose pre-set options.
Effebot prove itself as
a valuble tool during lockdowns
Service helps to maintain connection between administration and students no matter the distance
Summary
By now, Mr. Rinat Shamsiev says that Bulk voice calls can be useful tool for various fields even not absolutely obvious as educational organization. Universities have a lot of tasks which can be fulfill by robots: informing, providing surveys, promotions, activities control and much more.
If it seems that your problem cannot be solved by Effebot — contact us and we’ll make a solution, you’ll be surprised of.
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