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 lead volume increased, Tripleten faced significant operational challenges in their sales and 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.

The Challenge: Scaling Lead Management Without Sacrificing Quality

When Tripleten increased their ad spend in summer 2023, they quickly encountered a bottleneck in their sales process. Their existing admissions team simply couldn't handle the influx of new leads, creating a critical business challenge:

"We realized that we're starting to have so many students from different lead source, and we have to scale our sales team really fast, but at the same time, we also have to wait until we hire them. And, that was kind of costing us as a marketing team because we're like, we are ready to spend the budget. We are ready to attract more leads. We have good costs in our channels, but we are unable to handle them with the sales team that we have."

• ‍Volume Constraints: The marketing team was ready to expand ad spend to attract more potential students, but the admissions team couldn't scale fast enough to handle the increased volume.‍
• Hiring Delays: Recruiting and onboarding new admissions advisors was taking too long to meet immediate lead management 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 were spending valuable time on initial qualification calls rather than focusing on high-value conversations with qualified prospects that lead to conversion.

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.

We started to meet with different providers, and Retell was one of the providers that we met with and really loved that. I think you were the only ones who actually wanted to learn more about our case and actually to help us, to guide us through.

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

1. ‍Handle Initial Qualification: Charlotte engages with leads who complete Tripleten's career quiz, particularly focusing on non-target segment leads.‍
2. Answer Program Questions: The AI agent provides accurate information about Tripleten's programs, pricing, and educational approach.‍
3. Schedule Appointments: Charlotte can book qualified prospects for calls with human admissions advisors when appropriate.‍
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%.

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 2023, testing the AI agent with cold lead segments before expanding to broader use cases and wider deployment.

Tripleten's implementation involved several key components:

• ‍Prompt Engineering: Anastasiia 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 tested with internal staff first, collecting feedback before rolling out to small batches of actual leads.‍
• Continuous Optimization: They analyzed call transcripts to identify corner cases and improve Charlotte's responses to unusual questions.

One innovative approach was using ChatGPT to help craft better instructions for the AI agent. The full implementation process took approximately one month, balancing conversational quality with informational accuracy.

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: Leads complete a career quiz on Tripleten's platform.‍
2. Smart Segmentation: Based on quiz answers, leads are identified as target or non-target prospects.‍
3. AI Engagement: Non-target leads connect with Charlotte instead of waiting for a human advisor.‍
4. Natural Conversation: Charlotte introduces herself as a virtual assistant and guides the conversation.

"We still disclose at the beginning of the call when she uses herself...so when she introduces herself, she says that she's a virtual assistant, and despite the fact, because it sounds really natural, we still don't really pay attention to that. So there were a few cases in the pipeline where in the middle of the call they go like, 'Wait, are you an AI?'"

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.

Results & Impact

Retell AI's voice agents have delivered significant results for Tripleten:

• ‍1,000+ Hours Saved Since Implementation in August 2023.

"I think overall right now our agent has handled more than 1,000 hours since we started."

• ‍Scaled Outbound to 17,000 Calls Monthly, Saving 200 Hours Per Month.

"That's around 200 per month in lead volume that saves us around, so it's 17k call attempts per month."

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

"It’s pretty much on the same level, but considering that...with our human admissions team, it really depends on how how many leads they’re handling at the moment. So, if they’re packed, then it would be a longer time to actually reach out to someone, but [with the] agent we know that it’s stable, at the same time, and the leads don’t have to wait"

• ‍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.

"I think, in our team, we're utilizing AI to empower our team, so that they can be much more effective with the AI agents working like 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 leads.

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.

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