AI follow-up calls for course and admission enquiries

Why follow up enquiries with an agent?

Enquiries arrive in waves, after results, after an ad campaign, in the weeks before a batch starts. A counselling team can’t call every one back within the hour, and the families who enquired are usually comparing two or three institutes at once. Whoever calls first with clear answers gets the counselling session.

The first questions are nearly always the same: how much, when does it start, is there an instalment option, is it online or classroom, is there a hostel. An agent answers the ones you’ve given it facts for, in Hindi or English, and books the counselling slot. Whatever it couldn’t answer goes into a field, so the counsellor opens the call with it.

Parents often pick up instead of the student, or call back later on their own. The agent can carry on with whoever answers, and if you call from your own number with an inbound agent on it, a parent who rings back is answered too. That’s why this page is marked as both outbound and inbound.

How do you set it up?

1. Write the prompt with a short FACTS section and per-contact variables: {{course_interest}}, {{centre}}, {{fee_note}}, {{next_batch}}. Say that a parent may answer, and that the agent must never promise results, ranks or scholarships.
2. Put facts that change, like fees and batch dates, in variables instead of the prompt. A campaign keeps the agent exactly as it was when the campaign was created, so a fee change typed into the agent later won’t reach a running campaign. A new column in tomorrow’s upload will.
3. Add on-call HTTP tools against your counsellors’ calendar: one to read open slots and one to book. Without one, have the agent take a preferred time and let the counselling desk confirm it.
4. Turn on analysis with spoke_with, current_class, questions_asked, unanswered and counselling_slot, and give it your approved WhatsApp templates, such as the course brochure or the fee structure.
5. Test it in the browser as a student, as a parent who asks about the hostel, and as someone who enquired for a different course.
6. Run an always-on campaign through the API. Your enquiry form adds each lead with POST /v2/campaigns/{id}/contacts, with the lead id and source as metadata. Set the calling window around school hours, since a student is rarely free at 11 in the morning.
7. Rent a number through Mirai or connect your Plivo number, set it as the campaign’s Calls come from, and assign an inbound version of the agent to it for families who call back.

What should counsellors keep?

Counselling itself: course choice, a student’s preparation level, scholarship and discount decisions, and anything about results. The agent books the session and briefs the counsellor through the fields, and the counsellor runs it. When a family wants to talk to someone right now, the agent can’t transfer the call, so it books the earliest slot or promises a callback.

What should you check before calling families?

TRAI’s Third Amendment to the TCCCPR, notified on 18 September 2026, recognises a relationship based on an inquiry for seven days after it, if the inquiry was made in writing or through digital means and is kept in a verifiable form. For an application, the period is three months. So a website enquiry from yesterday and an application from last month are on different clocks. Keep the form record, with its timestamp and consent text, and settle anything older with your telecom provider or counsel.

The same amendment asks every sender to declare software-placed calls, including artificial-voice calls, to its originating telecom provider in advance with the numbers it will use, and treats undeclared ones as unsolicited. It takes effect in stages. For calling hours, check TRAI’s current rules and your consent records. We don’t scrub numbers against the national DND register, so that check is yours.

What does an enquiry call cost?

Only connected minutes are billed. On T1 a connected minute costs ₹1 with a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment, plus ₹0.30 for Mirai phone calling and ₹0.20 for call insights if you switch them on. On T5 it’s ₹5 a minute, pay as you go, with both included. Prices exclude GST. The cost block assumes about four minutes connected, an estimate for a call where a parent asks several questions and books a slot; a “we’ve already joined elsewhere” ends in seconds. Compare it with what one enrolment is worth. Pricing has the plans and the cost calculator takes your enquiry volume.