How Universities are Using AI Chatbots and Why You Should Too

We already discussed AI-powered chatbots and their multiple applications in our previous article on chatbots vs conversational AI. This time, we would like to focus on their use cases in one specific industry—education.

Chatbot tools have long been used by higher education organizations worldwide, as they enhance the student experience, facilitate the enrollment process, offer data-driven insights to professors, and help university staff members automate administrative tasks. They revolutionize the industry, simplifying institutions’ daily routines.

As a company that provides education software development services, AnyforSoft is excited about the invaluable advantages chatbot software brings to the industry. In this article, we would like to discuss them in more detail. You are about to learn how AI chatbots in universities benefit the education sector and how higher education institutions are using them to maximize operational efficiency (real examples included).

Without further ado, let’s get started!

The multiple benefits of higher education chatbots

AI-powered chatbots use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing to understand the intent behind user queries and provide human-like responses. They can understand human language (as far as technology does this) and learn from conversations. Unlike rule-based solutions (that is, software without artificial intelligence), AI chatbots can respond to any question, regardless of how it is phrased. Naturally, the development of such tools is expensive and time-consuming, but higher education institutions invest in them nonetheless.

Why?

Because university chatbots offer a myriad of benefits:

• Enhanced student experience and engagement. Chatbots in higher education provide round-the-clock support for students who require assistance or have questions, taking the workload off staff members. That’s especially beneficial for freshmen, as they typically face challenges when transitioning to university life. From day one, they have numerous questions, such as What is my course schedule?; Where can I find the dean’s office?; How do I access my training materials?; and so on. An intelligent chatbot can easily answer these and many other questions, helping students get on track quicker.
• Simplified student enrollment. Large higher education institutions receive thousands of applications a year. Harvard, for one, got over 56,000 applications for the class of 2027 last year, of which only 1966 were admitted. An AI chatbot solution can walk students through the enrollment process and even collect and process their admission documents, providing a huge help to higher ed organizations (find out more in our article on machine learning in education).
• Data collection and data-driven insights. AI chatbots in universities can collect data from student interactions and provide data-driven insights to university staff based on the collected data. This way, a university can, for example, discover the pain points of prospective students and alleviate roadblocks during the enrollment process. It can also find out the most frequently asked questions and create an FAQ section on the website. The opportunities here are endless.
• Centralized access to information. Sometimes students have a hard time finding the necessary information on the university’s website. There are two ways an organization can tackle the issue: design an intranet homepage where all the resources will be centralized or develop a university chatbot that would provide access to information on request. The significant benefit of the latter is that students won’t have to manually search for information—they can simply ask the chatbot and get what they want immediately.
• Cost-effective support. One of the biggest advantages of chatbots for universities is that they can handle the vast majority of routine and repetitive tasks, freeing up human resources for more important work. Instead of hiring someone and paying them to manage administrative work, a university can rely on an artificially intelligent chatbot, saving its resources.
• Lead generation. An intelligent chatbot quickly connects with website visitors and captures important contact information or other data from prospective students. It also helps colleges and universities deliver instant information to the prospects by pointing them in the right direction, especially if they’re considering specific degree options.
• Reduction of mistakes and clerical errors. Chatbots rely on the training data and provide information based on that data. Their responses are less likely to be affected by human mistakes or basic administrative errors.