How Thompson Rivers University Automates 83% of Prospective Student Inquiries

When Thompson Rivers University reached out to Comm100, its Future Students team was facing the same challenges that almost all admission and recruitment teams do across higher education. 

Increasing engagement with prospective students is essential to the university’s success, driving awareness, interest, and ultimately, enrolment. However, managing the high support volumes that come along with these goals is putting a strain on the tech, the team, and the support targets. 

For many years, the Future Students team at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) provided support to prospective students through phone and email. While the agents tackled the often-overwhelming inquiry volumes with gusto, they knew that a digital approach could dramatically help alleviate this pressure, particularly during peak periods. 

With this in mind, TRU began researching digital communication platforms with a focus on live chat and automation. Comm100 was chosen, with its privacy compliances, affordability, and integrated automation capabilities all highlighted as important features. 

At first, Comm100 Live Chat was set up to provide prospective students with instant, accessible, and accurate support. This helps them to: 

1. Connect with more prospective students by offering convenient communication
2. Provide a faster, personalized experience to these students, with an average wait time of only 25 seconds
3. Cut average chat duration and time to resolution so the team can manage more inquiries, more quickly.

Proof of live chat popularity is clear to see – the team now boasts a 4.28 customer satisfaction score (CSAT). As Lachlan Todd, Communications & Systems Coordinator, Future Students at TRU, summarized: 

“We know that some of our students dread the thought of calling us when they have a question. This just isn’t the case with live chat. Live chat breaks down this barrier and lets our students connect with us in a way that they feel most comfortable with. And rather than waiting days for a response by email, our students can now receive immediate responses via live chat and get on with their day.” 

Adding automation into the mix 

The next stage for TRU was to increase the team’s efficiency further by integrating Comm100 Chatbot into Comm100 Live Chat. With support from Comm100’s team, TRU built a chatbot to automate the most common FAQs they received from prospective students. These inquiries are typically straightforward yet time-consuming for agents. By routing these queries to the bot and resolving them without any human support, the team is no longer overwhelmed with inquiry volumes, particularly during peak admission periods. 

83% of all prospective student inquiries are now managed and resolved by Comm100 Chatbot. 

Automating 83% of inquiries doesn’t just help alleviate the team’s workload. It also helps to increase engagement with prospective students. With a bot in place, students now receive an instant response with no wait times, and at any time of the day. The speed and availability of this support has helped TRU to connect with more prospective students and increase admissions. 

Without any technical knowledge or coding experience, TRU were initially wary of adopting a chatbot. However, this uncertainty was quickly forgotten as they discovered how easy Comm100’s chatbot is to build and program. As Lachlan Todd, TRU’s key builder of the bot, explained:  

“I don’t have a computer science or programming background so finding a chatbot that was simple to build and code-free was crucial – and Comm100 Chatbot delivered on this. With a little learning and guidance from Comm100’s bot architect team, I built our bot from scratch with no technical knowledge. I think anyone who has a social media account can build a Comm100 Chatbot.”  

Wrap-up 

The success Thompson Rivers University has found with Comm100 can be seen among colleges and universities across the world. The likes of Stanford University, McMaster University, The Open University, and the University of Canberra are all improving student support and engagement with Comm100. If you’d like to find out more about the Comm100 platform, you can take a look here.