Saarthi Education Foundation has been helping students from Rajkot with their higher studies abroad for years. With an extensive network of more than 250 universities across the globe, 10+ offices in India, 5 abroad, and more than 2000+ students in countries like Canada, the USA, UK, Australia, China, and Russia placed through them, Saarthi Education manages its IELTS, TOEFL, PTE and GRE coaching, as well as a separate MBBS abroad counselling vertical.
Such wide-spread operations call for a sophisticated yet personalized approach to counselling every student, which the foundation has been delivering for years. Still, the growing number of students from different cities created multiple challenges, as the same counsellors would have to juggle between students who are still deliberating on applying abroad, who have already submitted their documents and are waiting to hear back from the selected universities, and those who just need to know the status of their visa.
The Front-desk Challenge of a Rising Consultancy
A student’s interaction with Saarthi Education rarely concludes with a single conversation. One student could have contacted the foundation from the website’s contact form, expressing their desire to study in Canada. Another might have visited the Rajkot office, inquiring about MBBS studies in Russia. And a third might have already submitted all the required documents and be waiting for the counsellors to contact them to clarify some details. All these students (and there are many more like them) require the attention of the foundation’s counsellors. Multiply this by the 10+ domestic and 5+ international offices of Saarthi Education, and it becomes obvious that there were plenty of opportunities for counsellors to get overwhelmed with routine task, instead of spending time on one-on-one counselling.
There were also various inefficiencies across the student acquisition and status update processes. For example, website inquiries would often go unanswered for 2-3 days, as the counsellors would have to first call them to understand what specific help they needed. While studying abroad is a lengthy process, a slow reply to an inquiry, especially late in the application cycle, could mean losing that student to a competitor. Moreover, reminders for IELTS batches and document submission guidance were done over phone conversations and ad-hoc messages, which resulted in students missing out on sessions or missing out on required documents. In addition, there was no systematic way to route a request about Canadian studies to a counsellor specialist in Canada, as opposed to general counsellors. And while regular status updates about visa processing were essential, such information was only provided upon request, or when a counsellor happened to remember to do so.
Not that these counsellors were underperforming, quite the opposite – their devotion and care for every student were genuine. Yet, as Saarthi Education’s operations grew, the same high-quality, personal approach required extra time and energy from counsellors, who were already spending most of their day chasing routine tasks.
How Bizzriser Transformed Student Counselling at Saarthi Education
Bizzriser has deployed Saarthi Education’s student counselling process onto WhatsApp Business API and optimized it using automated messages and systematic routing of requests.
Each website inquiry is responded to instantly via WhatsApp, asking a few clarifying questions, so that a counsellor could provide a more relevant first reply.
Any request for counselling, be it from website chat, email, or direct phone calls, is routed to counsellors specializing in the preferred study destination and course type, as opposed to a general queue.
Reminders for IELTS/TOEFL/PTE preparation batches are sent in advance, as well as document checklists, depending on the desired study destination and the requirements of the selected university, reducing absentees and documentation errors.
Status updates are provided routinely and automatically to students about to apply, in terms of the documents submitted, university response, visa submission processing, etc., eliminating routine calls and WhatsApp messages from students asking for the same information.
Announcements about new intakes, scholarships, and webinars are also broadcasted in segments, depending on the preferred study destination of the student, as opposed to a general audience.
All these optimizations have led to tangible improvements for Saarthi Education and their students.
How Bizzriser Helped Saarthi Education
The response time to website inquiries decreased significantly, as every inquiry now gets an immediate response, as opposed to the initial days when students would have to wait for someone to call them back.
The attendance rate of students on IELTS/TOEFL/PTE preparation batches increased due to the regular and systematic reminders.
Counsellors reduced the amount of time spent on providing routine status updates to students, which allowed them to dedicate more time and attention to each student. Moreover, the systematic and timely updates via WhatsApp kept students engaged and updated without having to call or message the counsellors.
Finally, the number of leads converted to actual student applications increased, as students got in touch with a specialist counsellor from the start, as opposed to a generalist.
Why It Helped Saarthi Education
When it comes to studying abroad, students and their families have to make one of the most important decisions of their lives. Throughout this process, they have numerous questions and concerns, both regarding the selection of the university and country and the application process itself. Therefore, choosing the right study abroad consultancy is as important as choosing the right university. In this regard, Saarthi Education understood that to deliver its quality counselling services across its multiple offices, it needed to optimize its communication with students. Using Bizzriser’s messaging platform allowed Saarthi Education to respond to every student inquiry faster and provide timely and relevant responses. At the same time, automations helped route individual requests to the relevant specialists, while regular updates were delivered systematically, instead of on a case-by-case basis. In other words, the Bizzriser solution enabled Saarthi Education to scale its operations, both in terms of acquiring new leads and delivering high-quality counselling to each student, without losing the personal touch.
Bizzriser enables education consultancies and multibranch businesses to scale their WhatsApp operations and acquire more students, without compromising on the personalized experience.