Are All AI-Infused Chatbots for Higher Ed Intelligent?
We’ve all encountered chatbots. Sometimes they are helpful. Sometimes they are not. But you almost always hit a dead end with them eventually where they pass you off on a form or reply with the dreaded “I don’t understand.”
For higher ed enrollment teams, these dead ends are unacceptable. With competition for students reaching a fever pitch, enrollment numbers continuing to slide, and higher ed staff feeling stretched to the point of burn-out, you simply can’t afford to lose the attention of prospective students.
In this piece, we propose some high-level points to consider for your team when looking for ways to integrate AI-infused chatbots into your enrollment process. In particular, we address the question of whether all AI-infused chatbots are, indeed, equally intelligent.
Higher ed enrollment funnels are becoming more complex
In addition to being increasingly varied in terms of their motivations for pursuing higher ed, contemporary students are entering and exiting enrollment funnels at any point of their student journey. Consider that 85% of prospective students are interested in multiple higher ed institutions, with 50% going so far as to make multiple deposits.
In order for your higher ed brand to stand out, messaging to students must be as authentic, engaging, and personalized as possible. Prospective students want to get the information they need as fast as possible in order to make a decision about where to study. Inconsistent, irrelevant, or generic messaging can be detrimental to this process.
While useful in triaging and managing volumes of students arriving to your site, less functional chatbots might serve to throw a wrench in this process. As a result, less than 7% of students find chatbots helpful in managing their personalized complexities. This suggests that, while chatbots can be useful, they are not a replacement for human-to-human interactions.
Balancing AI tech helps avoid losing your human touch
If integrated correctly, an AI-powered tool should help your team fine-tune interactions with prospective students. An AI-infused enrollment assistant, for example, an advanced chatbot built for higher ed, serves to triage and direct students to information or people they need to connect with. Unlike a classic chatbot, which attempts to mimic human interaction, an enrollment assistant, married directly into a P2P chat system, serves more as a friendly stepping stone connecting initial human interest to real human attention.
Enrollment assistants are built for higher ed
Related: Integrating AI Into Higher Ed Recruitment
Like their classic chatbot counterparts, an enrollment assistant is available 24/7. But, where a classic chatbot might point students towards a landing page or contact form, an enrollment assistant answers and asks basic questions to drill down further into student queries. Subsequent engagement might involve matching a prospective student with a student ambassador who shares their interests or suggesting programs for them to explore further. In addition to providing instantaneous personalized interaction with your brand, an enrollment assistant also helps take the load off your enrollment team by answering basic repetitive questions.
In this sense, not all AI-infused chatbots are built the same – and not all are, as we would say, “intelligent.” While some serve to replace human-to-human interactions, with mixed results, some are built with higher ed in mind. The latter of these tools works in synchronization with your enrollment objectives to provide personalized student experiences and help point students in the right direction in their research. In a nutshell, look for AI-infused tools which aim to support human interactions, not those designed to replace them.
Effective AI tools for higher ed should offer enrollment insights
While some chatbots provide enrollment teams with conversational data, not all of these tools go much beyond that. At Unibuddy, we believe AI integrations should go further than initial conversations and lead capturing. That’s why our platform offers additional AI-sourced conversational insights to help your enrollment team better understand who your students are – and what they need to move through your enrollment funnel.
Related: How Higher Ed Tech Helps Boost Student Diversity
With this in mind, Unibuddy provides your team with valuable AI-sourced insights to provide more student visibility. For smaller enrollment teams, like those at graduate schools, we show your team the likelihood of students to enroll in your program and the key motivations they have for doing so. For larger enrollment teams, we leverage AI to provide your army of student ambassadors with follow-up questions to ask specific groups of prospective students and lists of topics to engage them with, whether through automated messaging tracks or user-generated content.
Verdict? Not all chatbots are created equal
From navigating complex enrollment funnels to providing warm introductions to the right people on your team, not all chatbots are created equal. While a chatbot may offer instantaneous engagement with your prospective student audience, you want to ensure these AI-infused solutions provide valuable answers and suggestions. You also want to ensure any AI-infused chatbot you integrate with your enrollment process provides valuable data insights to further inform next steps. At the end of the day, a chatbot should be able to engage with students without losing your brand’s human touch.
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