Academic advisors play a critical role in promoting students’ success. However, the rapid expansion of new programs, unconsolidated data, and time restrictions, makes it increasingly difficult for advisors to resolve students’ queries effectively. In addition, manual intervention is required for fetching data from multiple systems and interfaces, analyzing the data, and supporting the students.
Solution:
Developing a virtual advising assistant using Dialogflow resolves day-to-day email queries from 9,000+ students; sorting them into four common categories [i.e. change of campus, change of major, deferment, re-enrollment], automating the quick retrieval of relevant student data to run eligibility checks, and generating templated responses for live advisors to personalize; enabling live advisors to focus on addressing more complex requests. The virtual advising assistant is then integrated with University’s email system.