ESSEC launches a new chatbot for its students

On the beginning of the new academic year 2018, ESSEC Business School will launch a chatbot, a kind of "virtual assistant" able to answer questions that students may have about their education (possibility of exchanges, apprenticeship, etc.). The objective is to answer easily and quickly to the recurring questions and thus offer them a service in parallel closer to their specific needs.

The chatbot@ESSEC provides students with a "virtual assistant", accessible by instant messaging in French and English, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will act as a single point of contact for their requests, on everything regarding their education at large. Depending on the question, the chatbot may ask for clarification on the student's situation, to better qualify his request. It can answer in a concise way, and send back to external resources if needed (website, form, document...). Finally, for more complex questions or requiring the intervention of a person from staff, it will refer the student to the right person. At its launching, the chatbot will be able to answer about 150 questions starting with the most asked ones.

These interactions will be possible thanks to a knowledge base set up and maintained by the various services in contact with the students. It will detail both the different levels of responses to be provided as well as the decision tree of outcomes to the correct answer. A language recognition engine will complete this database as well as a synonym database that will refer to the appropriate answer regardless of how the question was asked.