Technologies Used
Overview
An educational institute with a diverse course catalog received hundreds of repetitive inquiries daily about course details, schedules, instructors, fees, locations, and prerequisites. Their small administrative team struggled to respond promptly to all inquiries, leading to delayed responses and frustrated prospective students. They needed an intelligent, always-available solution to handle common questions while freeing staff to focus on complex student needs.
The Challenge
The institute's course information was spread across multiple markdown files, PDFs, and web pages, making it difficult for students to find answers quickly. Staff spent considerable time answering the same questions repeatedly via email and phone. International students in different time zones often couldn't reach anyone during their waking hours. The lack of immediate responses led to lost enrollment opportunities as prospective students moved on to competitors with more responsive support.
Our Solution
We developed a sophisticated AI-powered chatbot system with both text and voice capabilities. Using Trieve AI, we converted all course documentation into searchable vector embeddings, enabling semantic search across the entire knowledge base. The chatbot, powered by OpenAI's language models, can understand natural language questions and provide accurate, contextual answers about courses, instructors, schedules, fees, locations, and enrollment procedures. We integrated VAPI to create voice assistants, allowing students to have natural phone conversations with the AI. The React-based web interface provides an intuitive chat experience, while the Python backend orchestrates the AI services and manages conversation context.
Results & Impact
- Achieved 24/7 availability, answering the majority of student inquiries instantly without human intervention
- Reduced administrative workload significantly, allowing staff to focus on enrollment and student success
- Improved response time from hours to seconds, enhancing student experience
- Increased international student enrollment through round-the-clock multilingual support
- Captured valuable data on common questions, informing website improvements and FAQ updates