An AI assistant for tutoring centres and colleges

A tutoring centre gets most of its enquiries after school hours and on weekends, when parents finally sit down to sort things out. How much is a lesson? Do you do HSC chemistry? Is the first one free? What happens if we stop halfway through term? The answers are already on your website or your enrolment form. Botsmith reads them and answers at 9pm on a Sunday, and it will not promise anyone a band, a rank or a selective school place.

The questions parents and students actually ask

Parents comparing tutoring centres ring or message three or four of them in the same evening. The one that answers first, with a clear price and a clear next step, usually gets the free assessment booked. A website assistant does not go home at 8pm. It answers the same way at the start of term, when everyone is enrolling, and in week 7, when someone wants to know about the holiday course.

Ask a sample tutoring centre

This assistant belongs to Bluegum Learning Centre, a tutoring centre and short-course college we invented for this page. Every fee, time, address and phone number is made up. Try asking what one-on-one tutoring costs, whether they teach HSC chemistry, whether the first lesson is free, or what happens if you stop halfway through term. Then ask whether they can promise your child a selective school place, and see what it says.

Before we put it on this page we asked it six questions a parent would ask, and it answered all six correctly. On the first run it missed one: asked about "one-on-one tutoring", it could not find the fee, because the fee page only said "one-to-one". We added the other names people use for it to that one entry and it answered straight away. That is the kind of fix you will make in your first week.

It describes your programs. It does not promise results.

Tutoring is sold on hope, and a careless answer can turn a hope into a promise. "We run preparation for the selective school test" is information. "Your son will get in" is a promise nobody can keep. Botsmith answers only from your content, and says it is not sure rather than guessing. On top of that you write a standing instruction. The demo centre's says never promise marks, ranks, an ATAR, a band or a selective school place, and never assess whether a particular child has a learning difficulty. Questions about one student's progress, a complaint or a special arrangement go to a person.

The same care applies to colleges that run short courses for adults. If you are not a school or registered training organisation, say so on your site, and the assistant will say it too. The demo college's enrolment page says it does not issue qualifications and cannot enrol students who need a student visa, so that is the answer a visitor gets.

What it does not do

• It does not connect to your student management system, timetable software or learning platform. It cannot see a student's attendance, results or invoices.
• It does not take enrolments or payments. It tells people how to enrol and pay, the way your site describes.
• It does not book the assessment into your diary. When a parent wants a call back, it can collect their name and phone number or email and send them to your inbox with the conversation attached.
• It answers in the language the visitor writes in, which helps when parents are more comfortable in another language than their children are. It still answers only from the content you have given it.

Getting it ready before enrolments open

1. Create a bot with your centre's website address and let it read your pages.
2. Upload what you already hand out: the fee sheet, the term timetable, the enrolment terms, the holiday course flyer. Paste short ones in as text, one topic per entry.
3. Write your standing instructions: no promises about results, which questions go to a person, and how to handle questions about a particular child.
4. In the dashboard preview, ask the questions parents asked at the last open day, in their words. Fix any wrong answer on the page it came from.
5. Put the chat on your site, or add the chat link and QR code to your enrolment flyer and term newsletter. See the WordPress, Wix or Google Sites guides.

What it costs

A single centre fits Starter at US$19 a month: one bot and 2,000 messages a month. A college with separate sites for school tutoring and adult courses, or several campuses, can use Pro at US$49 a month for five bots and 10,000 messages. The trial is 14 days with no card, long enough to run it through the first fortnight of a new term. If your enquiries mostly arrive in the evening, read how to handle after-hours enquiries, or see what a website support bot should answer for a checklist to test it against.