Founded in 2009 and accredited in February 2014, University of the People (UoPeople) are the first non-profit, accredited online university that provides quality education to students worldwide. The university offers associate and bachelor’s degree programs entirely online and free of charge. They are designed to help qualified high school graduates from around the world overcome financial, geographic, political, and personal constraints keeping them from their studies. Degree programs include Business Administration, Computer Science, Health Science, and Education. The university has a diverse student population from over 200 countries and territories.
Location: California
Industry: Education
Features Deployed: Automation, Proactive Messaging, Web Chat, Social Messaging
Case Study
UoPeople’s mission is to make higher education more accessible to everyone. To fulfill this mission, UoPeople recognized the need to provide students with efficient and personalized support. As a result, UoPeople explored the use of a messaging bot to improve the student experience.
Project Solutions
Together, IT Solutions and UoPeople used the LivePerson platform to develop a messaging bot to provide 24/7 student support. The bot was designed to answer common questions, provide guidance on academic matters, and connect students with the appropriate UoPeople departments. The messaging bot was integrated with UoPeople’s student portal and accessible via their website, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. We created and rolled out an Outbound Proactive Messaging WhatsApp campaign to tens of thousands of prospects, directly to their phone numbers. The initial message provided a link for leads to register as a student – or they could continue the conversation directly with a human advisor, using a familiar channel.
Challenges
UoPeople are constantly striving to increase their student-base, with the 2021 target set at 100,000 students. One of the main challenges faced by UoPeople was ensuring that the messaging bot provided accurate and relevant information to students. Currently, the student-base is ~75,000. With six registration periods throughout the year, UoPeople were seeking a way to connect with their established leads and interested prospects at scale, from over 190 countries. We needed to ensure that the bot’s responses were consistent with the university’s policies and procedures. Another challenge was ensuring that the messaging bot was accessible to students with disabilities and complied with relevant laws and regulations.
Examples of web and social messaging for University of the People
Results
The messaging bot was launched in 2019, and since then, it has been successful in providing students with efficient and personalized support. The messaging bot has significantly reduced the workload of UoPeople’s support team and provided students with immediate responses to their queries. UoPeople has also reported an increase in student satisfaction and engagement since the introduction of the messaging bot.
Outcomes
The introduction of the messaging bot has had a positive impact on UoPeople’s operations. UoPeople has been able to scale its support services while maintaining a high level of quality. The messaging bot has enabled UoPeople to focus its resources on more complex issues while providing students with immediate support for routine queries. The direct approach of using proactive campaigns to gather sign-ups and registrations has been a huge success. The campaigns helped UoPeople get on course for their student target for 2021, and further Outbound Proactive Campaigns will be running for all future registration periods this year. Overall, the messaging bot has contributed to UoPeople’s mission of making higher education more accessible to everyone.
