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Case Studies

Open Universities Australia: Tripling lead qualification with generative AI agents

OUA logo for their case study about their successful generative AI agents

Open Universities Australia (OUA) is the largest higher education marketplace in Australia. Facing the challenge of engaging prospective students in a personalized and efficient manner, OUA leveraged LivePerson’s generative AI agents to enhance their recruitment process. This collaboration significantly improved lead qualification rates by 3x compared to self-searching and 2x compared to scripted chatbots.

The impact of AI agents

3x

increase in lead qualification rates vs. self-searching students

2x

increase in lead qualification rates vs. scripted chatbots

6.3 seconds

average response time / message from the AI agent

Open the PDF for the full case study, or keep scrolling.


Creating an engaging and personalized recruitment process

As Australia’s largest higher education marketplace, Open Universities Australia (OUA) is dedicated to making education accessible for all Australians. They pride themselves on offering impartial advice and guidance through their student advisors, available via phone and messaging channels. Recognizing that higher education is a significant decision and that prospective students are often at various stages of their consideration process, OUA partnered with LivePerson to enhance their engagement strategy. By integrating large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools into their web messaging, OUA not only improved response times but also ensured that interactions were empathetic, human-like, and effective — significantly enhancing the student experience.

“The prospective students that come to our website are in different consideration phases. So when they first decide to interact with OUA, there is a need for a conversational and personalized experience.”

~ Rachit Monga, Head of Student Recruitment, OUA

Challenge #1: Curating personalized student journeys

conversation example held by generative AI agents trained on a large language model

OUA faced the challenge of providing a warm, engaging experience to prospective students from their first interaction. The goal was to create a conversational experience that mirrored the style of their best student advisors.

Solution: Introducing advanced artificial intelligence to the student journey

OUA used LivePerson’s AI Studio, an advanced bot authoring environment for customizing and testing AI agents, to build an LLM-powered generative AI agent capable of handling initial inquiries with ease and empathy. This AI agent was designed to simulate believable human behavior, replicating the conversational style of OUA’s advisors for a seamless and engaging experience.

Outcomes using generative AI agents

  • Increased customer satisfaction: Customer interactions with the AI agent before speaking to human advisors led to increased customer satisfaction scores, demonstrating the effectiveness of this innovative approach.
  • Faster response times: The generative AI agents were able to respond to student questions in just 6.3 seconds compared to human advisors who took close to 2 minutes. 

“Our previous scripted bot would just pick up the student’s interest area via NLU [natural language understanding]… and it was pretty good. But definitely far from the results that we’ve seen since implementing the AI bot.” 

~ Ricky Stock, Channel Optimization Specialist, OUA

Challenge #2: Enhancing lead qualification

OUA needed a more efficient way to qualify leads, reducing the high abandonment rate and ensuring advisors received detailed information to provide tailored support. They needed a way to warm up students by answering common questions before they spoke to an advisor. 

Solution: Lead enrichment for improved retention

The AI agent gathered key information from students in a conversational manner, which helped qualify leads more effectively. This process reduced abandonment rates and provided advisors with comprehensive conversation summaries, allowing them to provide tailored solutions and increase their sign-up rate. 

Outcomes using their generative agents

  • Improved lead qualification rates: OUA saw their lead qualification rate more than 2x compared to older scripted chatbots and 3x compared to self-searching students.
  • Enhanced advisor efficiency: The generative AI agent’s detailed conversation summaries enabled advisors to provide more tailored support, improving the overall quality of assistance.

“When we brought it live, I’d say probably within the first 30 minutes we’d already had conversations flowing through it and invoking some really powerful conversations.”

~ Ricky Stock, Channel Optimization Specialist, OUA

AI agents introducing Study Explorer

OUA’s vision for the future

OUA’s collaboration with LivePerson has revolutionized their student engagement strategy, demonstrating that AI technology can enhance both efficiency and the student experience. Coming off of the success of their generative AI agent, OUA recently implemented LivePerson’s Routing AI Agent to help guide students to the Study Explorer as soon as they expressed interest in an area of study. Using context from the full conversation, the Study Explorer is able to fast-track and personalize each student’s experience — helping students determine the best education path for them.  Looking ahead, OUA plans to continue evolving their AI agent behavior and exploring new applications of generative AI to further improve student and advisor interactions.


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