University of Adelaide Simplifies ATAR Calculation with Chatbots
University of Adelaide cuts call wait times by 13x, improves customer experience, and achieves ROI on day one with Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise.
The University of Adelaide is a member of Australia’s prestigious Group of Eight research intensive institutions and ranked in the world’s top 1% of universities. With a reputation for excellence in education and research, the University aims to inspire young leaders, drive research impact, and engage with the community.
The University used to manage inquiries from potential students for their adjusted Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR)—the primary criterion for acceptance into university courses—via phone calls, emails, and live chat. But the calculation process was complex and labor intensive, making it difficult for staff to serve multiple students at one time. The University wanted to develop a bot for ATAR calculation and provide better support to applicants.
“By developing a chatbot with Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise, potential students can simply access their adjusted Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks via Facebook Messenger instead of waiting up to 40 minutes on the phone. We also gained the flexibility to scale the services and quickly expand to other future projects.”
Business challenges
Improve the speed of response time to prospective students by enabling school leavers to find out their adjusted ATAR scores via a self-service option and reduce call wait times and student stress during the results day
Enable University staff to focus on more complex scenarios, such as serving applicants who missed out on the acceptance into their desired courses, rather than spending time calculating ATAR scores
Enhance customer experience by enabling the University to easily scale up and down the service and provide the right information at the right time to current students and applicants
Why University of Adelaide Chose Oracle
“We were already using Oracle Service Cloud for nine years and Oracle Marketing Cloud for the last year. Deploying Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise was a natural progression because the successful partnership with Oracle gave us the confidence that we could deliver more value to our customers.”
—Catherine Cherry, Director, Prospect Management, Student Recruitment & Admissions Services, University of Adelaide
Results
The University of Adelaide discussed the business requirements with the Oracle team and Oracle Partner Rubicon Red and developed the chatbot to automate the conversation for adjusted ATAR score calculation with Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise. The University went live with the chatbot in just four weeks.
“The entire project just took me three one-hour meetings, two phone calls, and half a day of testing—that was it!” Cherry said. “In my opinion, no other vendors can beat Oracle for their development capabilities.”
Improved customer experience by developing a chatbot with Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise and enabling prospective students to quickly access their adjusted ATAR scores in less than 3 minutes via the University’s Facebook Messenger instead of waiting up to 40 minutes on the phone and taking another 5 minutes on a call with service agent
Slashed incoming phone inquiries during the peak hours by 47%—from 1,200 to less than 640—and achieved an overall reduction in calls by 40% on the results day by providing answers to 1 prospective student every 5 seconds via chatbot rather than contacting the service center
Gained a 60% user satisfaction rating with the bot by leveraging the built-in artificial intelligence of Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise to learn and remember previous conversations and respond to students, even with comments in a natural conversation, such as congratulations on student results
Achieved return on investment in 1 day by conducting approximately 2,100 unique conversations between prospective students and the bot on the first day and engaging 900 more applicants—some from the other competitor universities—than the other channels, such as phone and email, in the previous years
Gained high adoption rate by using Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise to easily teach the bot and enabling students to receive an accurate response with continued usage
Improved staff productivity by mirroring the conversation related to adjusted ATAR score calculation and empowering University staff to focus on providing high-level support to applicants, such as giving advice on alternative pathways to achieve their desired course selection
Delivered chatbot services in just four weeks by using a highly scalable Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise to rapidly build and connect the intelligent bot to Facebook Messenger
Supported future growth by gaining the flexibility to scale up or down the services, such as reducing staff schedule, based on University demands, and expand to other services, including Personal Qualities Assessment fees
Partners
“We are a large-scale organization that needs to work with business partners that share the same value and truly understand our needs. The partnership with Oracle and Rubicon Red enabled us to achieve this.” Cherry said. “Rubicon Red also helped us to resolve issues and realize the business benefits with Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise.”