Chatbot /

5 Min read

4 Ways Chatbot Can Help Your University Stand Out From The Crowd

June 7, 2020

Hardik Makadia

CEO, WotNot

Table of Contents

To make a decision, the students have a plethora of university websites to research and consider.

Students, fresh out of school, are filled with concerns about the different courses and respective curriculum offered by universities. They want to ensure that they make the right decision in choosing the university and a course that aligns with their academic and professional goals.

Instead of blindly searching the entire website for information as they have done on other websites, students can be guided through your university information seamlessly using a chatbot for university. The conversational nature of a chatbot makes the students feel comfortable on your website. The chatbot for university can ask them relevant questions and instantly provide the answers they are looking for while generating leads for your educational institute.

Chatbots for university can also be utilised beyond the admission stage by helping them with daily classes schedules, connecting them to a teacher/expert they can talk to for guidance, providing tips to prepare well for exams, and more.

The university chatbot, being used in any scenario, provides students the comfort of being able to talk to someone for all their university-related FAQs. Here’s a detailed take on how a university chatbot can significantly bridge the gap between the students and your university:

Course Recommendation

Instead of presenting course details in huge blocks of text that anyone barely reads, your university can make the whole experience more immersive by recommending courses through a higher education chatbot. Chatbot for university can provide personal customised assistance to students regarding the different courses offered by your institution.

Based on the student’s academic background and their interests, your university chatbot can provide answers to relevant queries regarding the curriculum of the course, its duration, the credits related to each subject, whether it involves an internship, etc. Furthermore, the chatbot can also put a student in touch with a career counsellor if he/she needs more clarity on the course they want to opt for.

Admission Process

Manual processes in admission tend to be error-prone and highly time-consuming. University staff struggle with workload and skewed resources and at the same time, bottlenecks in admission processes weigh students down. Chatbots can help universities simplify the admission processes.

Students can be guided through the application process via chatbot for college admissions. College chatbots can act as a one-stop solution for all application-related queries. Information on documentation guidelines, enrolment process, etc can be taken care of in the bot itself, freeing up the admin staff from repeatedly answering the same queries. This also eliminates the need for students to scour through multiple web pages or call up the university for every little but important piece of information.

On-boarding

New students take some time to get familiar with and feel at ease in the university. Universities using chatbots can make the onboarding journey very comfortable for its students. Updates on campus visits, programs as a part of orientation week, etc can be communicated to the students through the university chatbot.

Chatbots can also help students track their respective schedules and get reminders of the upcoming classes and events. AI-powered chatbots can have students ask their own questions to the bot, and thus constantly improve its responses based on feedback and what the most preferred answers are. What’s more, chatbot can be deployed on multiple channels, for e.g., Facebook Messenger, SMS, web, mobile app, WhatsApp to help maximise your reach.

Student Support Point

Universities can go a step further by providing support to students in the form of tips on preparing better for exams, defining preparation strategy, allowing them to report matters like bullying, all through the chatbot.

Universities can be accessible to students through the bot for instant answers regarding campus services, different scholarship programs, training sessions, and more. This will also considerably offload the staff’s work of solving generic and repetitive queries of every student.

Chatbots can also be utilised to hand out quizzes and practice tests, collect course feedback from students and send out test results, thereby saving both effort and time for students and teachers.

Wrapping Up

Chatbot for university caters to the users’ queries round the clock and provides instant answers, thus reducing wait times. Instant response to student dilemmas contributes to the positive branding of your university, thereby contributing to a higher number of registrations and admission queries. Accurate, scalable, and consistent – well-designed chatbots can help your students have a personalized and positive experience.

While chatbots are industry-agnostic, it is important for your chatbot provider to understand your organisation goals and design a chatbot that suits your use-case. Here, at WotNot, we work closely with our clients to make chatbots that are tailor-made to suit their business needs.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Hardik Makadia

CEO, WotNot

His leadership, pioneering vision, and relentless drive to innovate and disrupt has made WotNot a major player in the industry.