The challenge
A national ed-tech platform offering data science, product management and digital marketing cohorts was getting 600 enquiries a week across Meta, Google and YouTube. The 22-person inbound counselor team could not keep up — first-touch averaged 19 hours, weekend leads went cold, and conversion to paid was stuck at 2.1%. Half the counselor day was spent asking the same five qualifying questions.
How we deployed
- Built an AI counselor agent on the website chat, WhatsApp Business and inbound Twilio voice line.
- Ran course-fit scoring inside the conversation — career stage, target outcome, budget band and timeline.
- Routed high-intent students straight onto a senior counselor calendar via HubSpot.
- Sequenced low-intent students into a 30-day MoEngage nurture across email and WhatsApp.
- Logged every conversation transcript back to the HubSpot contact for counselor context.
- Auto-flagged corporate-sponsored learners to a separate B2B inbox for enterprise pricing.
What changed
- Paid enrollment tripled inside 90 days on the same ad spend.
- Counselor load fell 54% — same team, 3x output, no overtime.
- Time-to-booked-call collapsed from 19 hours to 8.4 minutes.
- After-hours conversions grew to 28% of monthly revenue, previously near zero.
- CSAT on the AI counselor held at 4.5/5 across 14,000 conversations.
"Our counselors stopped doing intake calls. They are actually counseling now — talking career trajectory, not asking which city the student lives in."
— Head of Growth · National Ed-Tech Platform