Case studies / Education
Case studyAn admissions enquiry assistant with clear escalation
An international school group answered routine admissions questions instantly in five languages, and handed families to staff whenever a conversation needed a person.
Overview
A group of nine international schools in Southeast Asia and the Gulf, teaching British and bilingual curricula to around 11,000 pupils aged three to eighteen.
Scale. Roughly 25,000 enquiries in each admissions season, by web chat, email and messaging apps, with sharp peaks in the weeks after open days and before fee deadlines.
The challenge
Admissions teams at each school were small, typically two or three people, and in peak season they were overwhelmed. The same questions arrived hundreds of times a week: fees, sibling discounts, bus routes, uniform, entry assessments, application deadlines and whether a place was available in a given year group.
Families expected quick answers, often in the evening and often in their first language. Replies could take a day or more in busy weeks, and the group's own research showed that families who waited longest were least likely to book a visit. Meanwhile, the enquiries that genuinely needed care, such as a child with additional learning needs or a family relocating at short notice, sat in the same queue as questions about lunch menus.
Admissions staff were wary of a chatbot. They had seen poor ones and feared families being given wrong fee information or being trapped in a loop when they wanted to speak to someone.
The solution
Families meet the assistant on the school website, by email or on messaging apps. It recognises which school and year group they are asking about and answers from that school's approved fees, policies and practical information, in the family's chosen language. When an answer depends on detail it does not have, such as current availability, it says so and offers to connect them.
Handover is explicit and immediate. If a family mentions a learning need, a medical condition or a personal circumstance, or simply asks to speak to someone, the conversation goes to the admissions team for that school with a short summary. Staff respond in the same thread, and families are told when to expect a reply.
Weekly review keeps the content current. Fee changes, new bus routes and term dates are updated in one place and reflected immediately. Reporting shows volumes, languages, top questions, handover reasons and conversations that ended without a clear answer.
The engagement
- Four months
- Four specialists, with admissions leads from three schools
- Policy and question collection, assistant build and testing, multilingual support, handover rules, conversation review process and reporting.
Integrations
- School websites
- Admissions and enrolment system
- Messaging apps
- Analytics and reporting
How we delivered it
- 01
Collect policies and common questions
Four weeks
We gathered fee schedules, admissions policies, transport and uniform information for each school, and analysed a season of past enquiries to find the questions families actually ask. Where schools gave different answers to the same question, we resolved them with the admissions leads before anything was built.
- 02
Build and test the assistant
Five weeks
The assistant answers only from the approved material for the relevant school, in English, Arabic, Mandarin, Thai or Bahasa Indonesia. Admissions staff tested it with hundreds of real questions, including awkward ones, and every wrong or vague answer was traced and corrected.
- 03
Define handover rules with staff
Two weeks
Staff wrote the rules for when the assistant must hand over: learning needs, safeguarding, fee hardship, complaints, anything the approved material does not cover, and any time a family asks for a person. Handover passes the full conversation so families never repeat themselves.
- 04
Launch and review conversations weekly
Five weeks
The assistant went live school by school. Each week admissions leads reviewed a sample of conversations and every handover, flagged weak answers and updated content. Reports showed what families asked most, by school and language.
Results
- Faster responses to routine questions, at any hour
- Staff time freed for families who needed help
- Insight into what families ask by school and language
- Every sensitive conversation handed to a person
Families now get answers to routine questions almost instantly, at any hour and in their own language. Most routine enquiries are resolved without staff involvement, and the rest arrive with context already gathered.
Admissions staff spend their time on the families who need them: those with complex needs, those deciding between schools and those who want to visit. Several schools reported that families booking tours were better informed and further along in their decision.
The reports gave leadership something new: a clear picture of what families ask, by school and language. One school found a surge of transport questions from a new residential area and added a bus route the following term.
Staff confidence grew quickly. Because the handover rules were theirs, and because they reviewed conversations every week, they could see the assistant knew its limits.
We decided when it should step aside, and it does. That is why we were comfortable putting it in front of families.
What made the difference
Clear escalation made staff trust the assistant. Because admissions teams wrote the handover rules themselves, they saw it as their tool rather than a replacement.
