in this fall term, we got so many phone
calls that we actually blew up the phone
system. Welcome to Focus, a podcast
dedicated to the business of higher
education.
I'm your host, Heather Richmond, and we
will be exploring the challenges and
opportunities facing today's higher
learning institutions. In today's episode
I caught up with Kristy Pritchett,
director of student account services, at
the University of Alabama. We'll discuss
how her team is leading the charge on
implementing AI bots to support their
student account services and their
vision for rolling out bots campus-wide.
Thank you, Kristy, for being our guest
today to talk about bots versus bodies.
Heather, I'm really glad to participate
in this conversation and thank you for
having me. Absolutely. Well I know that
you are super excited about
incorporating BOTS into your business,
but since BOTS are still pretty new
technology, can you give us an overview
of the different types of BOTS that you
researched? Yeah, I'd love to.
So just to start with BOTS can take
a lot of different forms and they can do
a lot of different things. So when we
talk about BOTS on our campus, what we're
really talking about is robotic
automated processes. And we're looking
for technology that can help us with the
well-defined,
routine tasks like extracting data,
loading data files, answering simple
questions, etc., and we're doing that in my
department. So we're also looking to use
BOTS for both automated processes and to
better serve students by helping answer
questions and reduce the volume of phone
and email messages. And a project that
I've been most excited about recently is
our new chat bot. Particularly, in the
fall term, we get a lot of phone calls
and emails. I'm sure lots of offices are
like that. Meaning your very routine
questions, they're easy to answer for our
staff, but it takes staff time to touch
all of those questions. And a lot of
schools have gone to one-stop shops to
deal with those types of questions, but
those shops also take extra staff to run.
And we're really looking for a more
automated solution to address these
questions
instead of having to hire extra people.
And I do want to be clear that I don't
see automation replacing people. I don't
see any of our staff being displaced by
BOTS, but what I do see is BOTS relieving
extreme burdens on time and allowing
staff to be focused on the more
complicated questions and to focus on
some of the other projects that we need
to be working out. Yeah, that makes complete
sense. You're really just shifting roles
and responsibilities and allowing those
BOTS to do those kind of tasks that
happen on a regular basis. It's the same
question over and over again. Right,
that's exactly right. Right, so you
kind of touch on that, but what made you
first start looking into BOTS? What was
the university struggling with that led
you to look for this new solution? So
just to give you an example of what we
deal with in my office, in this fall term,
we got so many phone calls that we
actually blew up the phone system. In
that day, we had over 500
voicemails and the system could not take
anymore. The calls started rolling to an
overflow line. We didn't have staff to
answer them because everybody in our
office was already on the phone and we
had 70 people waiting in our phone queue
all day long. We just couldn't get to
everybody.So we get a lot of calls in
our office. We also get a lot of calls
for other offices on campus. So that
doesn't even factor in the emails that
we received. We're guessing that we
got over 2,500 calls in one day. And
clearly we need to be able to handle the
volume and answer the questions that
we're getting, but we also need to be
able to do that with the staff we have.
So we were looking for solutions that
could address that need. And the other
thing that we think a lot about is how
students communicate. You know they
really don't read their emails anymore,
they don't answer the phone call when we
make the phone calls. So they also
need help at times when our office isn't
open. We all know students may be up at
2:00 in the morning, We've gotten
voicemails at 2:00 in the morning. So we
needed
solution that could work with the
students when the student want help. Do
you mean you're not there at 2:00 in the
morning to help answer those phone calls?
I do sometimes I answer emails in the
morning, but not very often.
So really you know you were looking to
improve efficiency, not only in your
office, but also really have the bot
helping you to improve that student
experience, right? Absolutely. That's great.
So I have to ask does your body have a
name? It does. We branded our chat bot as
BamaBot. That's clearly associated with
the University of Alabama. We worked with
our strategic communications team to
develop that branding and the name, and
we wanted to make it clear that it
wasn't a live person. So having BOT in
the name was important. Oh that makes a
lot of sense. That's really cool. So how
have you marketed BamaBot? Our bot is
pretty new. We just turned it on in late
August. We haven't done a lot of
marketing yet, but the things that we
have done include adding it to our email
signatures. Both our central student
email account, as well as, our personal
email signatures, it's obviously on our
website, and we have just recently added
a comment to our waiting message in our
phone system. So that when people call
our office they know they don't have to
wait in the queue. They can try using the
BOT. Well, I'll tell you that adding it
to your email signature definitely
worked because I clicked on BamaBot
from your email signature. I just asked
a couple of questions to see what it was
like And I tell you what, I was so amazed
at how fast the response was. What all do
you have the bots helping you with?
We primarily have BamaBot answering
what we consider to be repetitive - kind
of tier one type questions - that are easy
to answer. That's the stuff that's really
well-defined and consistent like how do
I set up a payment plan,
when is the bill due date, how do I sign
into my students account. And we have a
lot of those answers on our website. So
they're out there, but this is a really
convenient way for people to find that
information. But we also have really big
dreams. So we plan to hook it
Banner, which is our ERP system. It can go
through single sign-on to verify
students identity. And then it can
answer specific account questions like
what's my balance, what is this charge
for and other types of questions like
that.
Oh wow, sounds like it's much more
efficient way for you to do business. But
so what are your students think of BamaBot?
So as I mentioned earlier, it's
fairly new to us because we did just
turn it on in August. So we haven't been
through a full billing cycle yet, but we
are seeing a lot of interest. Already
we've had over 3,000 interactions and
we're getting questions for areas all
over campus that don't have a bot yet. So
I think we're seeing a lot of interest.
They seem to really like it and I only
see that growing. Wow that's a lot of
activity without a lot of promotion.
That's right. Yeah so this sounds like really a
great investment, but I'm sure there are
a lot of requirements that went into
making a decision on the bot. So can you
just help others figure out what should
the questions they be asking when
they're exploring the option of using a
bot. Absolutely, there were a lot of
things that went into the decision to
get a bot, and even into the decision of
which bot to get. So some of the
things that we thought about were does
the vendor we partner with understand
higher education? This is kind of a
unique market so we really wanted
someone who had other strong partners in
that market that understood what we do
and how things work. Another question
that we asked ourselves was what schools
do they currently work with. We talked to
a couple of different vendors. One was
not shy at all about showing who they
work with, which schools and how many.
There was another vendor that we looked
at that really wouldn't answer that
question, and that was pretty much a red
flag. You know every school that
purchasing something as big as this,
wants to know that the vendor has had
success in this area. And then something
else that we wanted to know was how they
how the bot
handle questions if it can't answer that
question. So for instance the product
that we're using can send the question
to a live agent or it can direct it to a
ticketing system. And so that's the
method we're currently using. We have
those questions go into our central
email account. So that we can respond to
the student or parent with the correct
answer if the bot doesn't know it. And
then behind the scenes, we can feed the
bot those answers so it learns and knows
how to answer the questions going
forward. That's cool. Another thing, yeah,
another thing that we thought about was
what kind of staffing does this
require. Is it a live chat agent, do we
have the staff to do that? My office
currently doesn't. So it was important
for us to use artificial intelligence.
Also technical staff, what kind of
technical staff do we have to have? And
we were lucky because the product we're
using doesn't require any. The vendor
provides all of the heavy work and we
have minimal work that we have to do in
terms of really just answering some of
the questions that it can't answer yet.
And we do see that it's continuing to
learn. So that's important. And since we
do have to feed it information for
questions that it hasn't learned yet, how
easy is it to work with. And as we think
about how students want to use
technology, what channels does the bot
use to communicate. Can it hook to Alexa,
Siri, Facebook Messenger,
or is Live Chat an option if we wanted
to use that. So those are all things you
need to be thinking about. And then as a
higher education institution we're all
concerned about branding we want it to
be associated with our school and look
like it belongs to us.
So can you custom brand so that it looks
like your school and its affiliated with
your school? Can it integrate with other
systems like your ERP system, maybe your
enrollment management system. You should
ask your vendor those kinds of questions.
And then what kind of data and reporting
can you get out of the system because
it's important to be able
to see what your students are asking
your bot. As well as, how its answering
those questions. So you know, do you need
to add more information somewhere? Is it
providing the right answers to the
question. Is your partner open to new
ideas, and are they constantly advancing?
Because we all know technology is
changing, and it's changing faster and
faster over time. So are they going to be
a partner that's going to move forward
with you or they kind of stagnant and
not advancing? You know I see this
technology in its infancy and that it
will continue to grow. So we definitely
want someone we can partner with over a
longer period of time. And then there are
the obvious things like cost, bid
requirements, etc., that are gonna vary
from state to state. Oh sure, absolutely.
So it's interesting you talking about
the reporting. Are you able to see where
the bot is answering the question like
on Alexa or Siri, etc? Or what kind
of reporting do you have? So there's a
dashboard inside our chat bot on the
administrative side. And I can log in and
see how many interactions the bot has
had. What the accuracy percentage of
answering questions is. Ours is currently
running around 93%, which I feel like
it's very well. That's really good.
And then it gives you some statistics
like what time of day do you get most of
your questions, what day of the week do
you get most of your questions, and
probably more important to me, I can log
in and see the actual transcripts from
every conversation that the bot has. So I
can read the questions that it's being
asked. I can see the answers that it's
providing and there's also a box where
we get questions that our vendor doesn't
know how to answer. And that's kind of
where we go in and feed the data.
That's really cool. So it sounds like you
are really able to train your bot if you
want to. Absolutely and that's really
important because as your data changes
and we you know we have tuition rates
that may change from time to time or the
process
that we followed may change from time to
time. So it is important that you can go
in and update some of those things.
Change answers as information changes or
provide more information as information
changes. And that's important to be
able to do that with your vendor. Yeah it
sounds like it really gives you some
good insights to even know for yourself
how to staff at different times of the
day or different days of the week based
upon some of that data. Absolutely. That's
really cool. So of course like anything
getting something new, what was the
process like that you went through to
get BamaBot up and going everything
from contracting to implementing. So
we're a state school. So there are bid
requirements that we have to go through,
but you know one of the things that we
also thought about was we wanted a
cohesive experience on campus. So we
didn't want one department having one
bot in another department having a
different kind of bot. So that's not good
for our customers. It's not a good
experience.
It just looks disorganized. So we've
really pulled in several other
departments that are heavily involved in
student facing service. And we all
participated in a number of discussions
and demos. So that we could make sure we
were all on the same bit on the same
page. And that took a bit of time. I'm
sure everybody has those experiences. And
every department has something different
that they're looking for. Then
getting funding was an important
decision. So once you've all made a
decision, you have to kind of go together
to work out the the pricing and the
money aspects. But once we had those
pieces in place, we worked through our
procurement department, our legal office
and our compliance office to make sure
we had the proper documents and
disclosures in place. And with all the
data security requirements that are in
place today, we wanted to make sure we
had all those faces covered. So that's
really where our compliance office
stepped in and helped us with some of
those things. Once we got the contract
signed, then we worked with our strategic
communications area for the
branding aspects. We provided that
information to our vendor and for
what we're doing our vendor actually did
most of the work. It was about a four
week turnaround time from the time we
signed the contract until they had the
initial stages of the bot ready and we
could turn it on. And really let it start
learning. Okay Kristy, so how'd you get
campus leadership on board to commit to
this level of investment? So for us it
was really a process of
explaining the need and explaining how
having a tool like this could
potentially make the student experience
more positive. And it would save us money
in the long run. So we actually got a lot
of support at high levels of leadership
very quickly. That's great. So is there
anything that you would do differently
in terms of choosing your bot and going
live with your bot. Probably the only
thing that I would like to have seen
happen differently was the timeline. It
took us about nine months to get all the
pieces in place from the time we started
talking to the vendor about what they
could do until the time we got the
contract signed. Gotcha,
and so how do you see BamaBot evolving
throughout the whole campus beyond your
department. So I think this product can
really improve the overall student or
customer experience. I think every
department on campus gets calls for
other areas and having to send those
students or parents around campus can
get really frustrating for them. So if
implemented correctly, I think a chat bot
can answer all of those questions,
without the student ever getting
directed somewhere else. So I really see
it vastly improving our relationships
with our students and parents, And as I
mentioned earlier I think it also allows
those students to communicate when and
how they want to. We all know they like
to text more than they like to talk. And
as I mentioned the student that wants to
ask us a question at 2 a.m. can do so on
a chatbot really 24 hours a day 7 days a
week, without us ever having to be in
office. Yeah, I think that's great, and I
know that we talked in the past that you
mentioned chat bots have really given
back time to your staff
numbers. How are you reallocating those
hours? say we plan to reallocate those
hours to spend more time in dealing with
the more complicated issues. The chatbot's
never going to be able to answer every
question. There really are things that
our staff need to be touching but it'll
give them time to do that while reducing
some of their frustration and having to
answer the repetitive stuff. And then we
will also work on projects that we
haven't had time to get to in the office.
And we'll probably do more proactive
outreach. So there's plenty of work to do
for all of our existing staff and no one
really needs to worry about a bot
replacing people. Yeah I think that's
great. I know we hear a lot of again if
you can shift because you're being more
customer service focused and have your
staff of people or bodies be able to
take those types of questions and let
your bots take the everyday questions
that they can find on the website, but
just do it quicker, it's just really a
win-win for both. That's a hundred
percent correct and that's really what
we're aiming for by implementing this
chatbot. That's great. So any other advice
that you would give other institutions
who are researching BOTS right now?
Well I would just say not to be afraid
to use new technology and don't worry
about your people losing jobs. I really
don't see that happening, I do see it
improving job satisfaction, as well as,
student experience. I know our staff can
get frustrated when they have to answer
the same question 20 times in an hour. So
it really should take that out of what
your staff do on a daily basis and make
them happier with their existing jobs.
And I would also encourage others to be
thinking about what a bot can do for you
and your campus. I think that's great.
Thank you so much, Kristy, for sharing
your insights on BOTS and how they
really improve operations and provide a
great student experience on your campus.
Thank you so much, Heather, I enjoyed
participating. Thanks for tuning in to
this episode of Focus. Don't forget to
subscribe so you
can stay up-to-date on the business of
higher education. For more information,
check us out at www.touchnet.com.
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