How TripleTen Uses Retell's Calling AI to Transform Admissions Operations

TripleTen is a leading tech education provider that offers coding bootcamps designed to help career-changers transition into the tech industry. With a focus on skills-based learning and job placement,TripleTen needed to efficiently handle a high volume of prospective student inquiries while maintaining quality engagement throughout the admissions process.

As their marketing efforts gained traction and student volume increased,TripleTen faced significant operational challenges in their admissions department that threatened to limit their growth potential. The solution they discovered, Retell AI, would transform their operations and set a new standard for educational enrollment processes.

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The Challenge: Providing Prospective Student Support without sacrificing quality

With the program inquiries volume increasing in summer 2024, they quickly encountered a bottleneck in their admissions process. Their existing admissions team simply couldn't handle the influx of new student inquiries, creating a critical business challenge:

“We realized we were getting so many students from different sources that we needed to scale our Admissions team very quickly. However, we also had to wait until new hires were onboarded. This was a challenge for our marketing team because we were ready to spend the budget, attract more students, and had good costs in our channels, but our current admissions team couldn't handle the volume.”

• Volume Constraints: The admissions team couldn't scale fast enough to handle the increased volume of potential student inquiries.
• Hiring Delays: Recruiting and onboarding new admissions advisors was taking too long to meet immediate student needs.
• Time-Sensitive Responses: Educational decisions are often time-sensitive, and delays in follow-up were causing potential students to look elsewhere.
• Resource Allocation: Admissions advisors faced challenges supporting prospective students effectively across various stages of their decision-making journey. Advisors spent significant time on initial inquiries, limiting their capacity to engage deeply with prospects further along in their decision-making process who required more personalized attention.

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The Solution: Retell AI's Voice Agents

After researching multiple AI assistant providers,TripleTen chose Retell AI for their conversational AI platform. What made Retell stand out was their willingness to learn about TripleTen's specific use case and provide customization options that aligned with their admissions process.

‍"Among the various providers we met, Retell stood out. We particularly appreciated that Retell was the only one genuinely interested in understanding our specific case and actively guiding us."

TripleTen implemented an AI voice call assistant named "Charlotte" that could:

1. Handle Initial Program Intro: Charlotte engages with prospective students who complete TripleTen's career quiz, particularly focusing on prospects who are not yet ready to enroll.
2. Answer Program Questions: The AI agent provides accurate information about TripleTen's programs, pricing, and educational approach.
3. Schedule Appointments: Charlotte can identify which prospects are ready for the next step in the process and schedule them to speak with an admissions advisor.
4. Manage High Call Volumes: The system can handle thousands of call attempts monthly, operating during times when human agents might be unavailable.
5. Increase Pickup & Conversion Rates: Charlotte's calls were supported with Retell's proprietary Branded Call feature that increased pickup and conversion rates by 20%.

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Implementation & Integration

TripleTen took a measured approach to implementing their AI voice call solution, starting small and expanding gradually. The implementation process began with a small prototype in August 2024, testing the AI agent with partial rollout before expanding to broader use cases and wider deployment.

TripleTen's implementation involved several key components:

• Prompt Engineering: The TripleTen team built the agent prompts, developing specific sections to help Charlotte handle interruptions naturally and maintain conversational flow.
• Technical Integration: The development team connected Retell AI with their HubSpot CRM, creating triggers to activate Charlotte at the right moment in the customer journey.
• Testing Protocol: The team extensively tested with internal staff first, collecting feedback before rolling out to small batches of actual prospects.
• Continuous Optimization: They analyzed call transcripts to identify corner cases and improve Charlotte's responses to unusual questions.

The TripleTen team focused on optimizing Charlotte by focusing on crafting instructions and improving the agent's script step by step. The full implementation process took approximately one month, balancing conversational quality with informational accuracy.

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The Customer Journey with AI Voice Calls

TripleTen created a simple yet effective journey for prospective students interacting with their AI voice agent:

1. Career Quiz: Prospective students complete a career quiz onTripleTen's platform.
2. Smart Segmentation: Based on quiz answers, prospective students receive tailored outreach from Charlotte, the virtual assistant.
3. Natural Conversation: Charlotte introduces herself as a virtual assistant and provides immediate support, answering questions and guiding students toward the next step in their decision-making process. 

“The AI sounds incredibly natural. We've had several prospects pause mid-call and ask, 'Wait, is this really an AI?'”

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Technical Integration Details

TripleTen's AI calling implementation connects seamlessly with their existing systems:

• HubSpot Integration: Information from AI calls flows directly into their CRM.
• Custom Triggers: The development team created specific website triggers to initiate AI calls at optimal moments.
• Branded Caller ID: This proved critical, with pick-up rates dropping 20% when temporarily unavailable.
• Conversation Design: TripleTen uses Retell's conversation flow builder to optimize different parts of each call.

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Results & Impact

Retell AI's voice agents have delivered significant results forTripleTen:

• ‍Hours Saved Since Implementation in August 2024: 3,000+

"Right now, our agent has handled more than 3,000 hours of talk time since we started — time that our advisors can now use to support students more personally"

• ‍Outbound to Calls Monthly: 17,000 ‍
• Hours Saved Per Month: 200

"That’s roughly 200 hours per month we’re getting back, allowing our team to stay focused on higher-value conversations"

• Maintained Conversion Performance During High Call Volumes: AI agent conversion rates equal those of human advisors, when human advisors cannot handle high call volume.

"Compared to our human admissions team, the agent provides a more consistent experience. The human team's response time can fluctuate based on workload, but Charlotte delivers stable, immediate support, eliminating waiting periods for students"

• Team's Workflow Streamlined:TripleTen's agent is able to save their respective teams crucial time that is now being better used for higher value tasks like personalization.

“We're utilizing AI to empower our team, so that they can be much more effective with the AI agents working side by side with them. And, we're not trying to replace our whole team with AI agents because we know that especially in education, personalization is really important.”

This solution enabled TripleTen to scale their marketing while keeping their admissions team focused on high-value conversations.

TripleTen's implementation demonstrates that AI voice calls, when thoughtfully deployed, can deliver substantial operational benefits without sacrificing the personal touch that prospective students expect. By automating routine qualification conversations, they've freed their admissions team to focus on higher-value interactions while still providing immediate response to all prospective students.

For educational institutions and other organizations facing similar scaling challenges,TripleTen's experience shows that conversational AI can be a powerful tool for growth, efficiency, and enhanced customer experience.