Empowering University-level Help Desk for International Applicants with AI Chatbots

Zahra Karimi, Giuseppe Gallipoli, Luca Cagliero, Francesca Chicco, Carola Rosa, Alessandra Sechi

Abstract: In this paper, we present the design, development, and testing of AI chatbots to support the help desk service provided by the Recruitment and Admissions Unit at Politecnico di Torino, a technical university located in the north-west of Italy. We explore the use of data-driven, AI-based conversational agents providing targeted responses to applicants’ queries based on both the past student-office interactions through a ticketing system and a collection of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). With an ever-increasing number of requests from international applicants (20k+ requests from 100+ countries since January 2024), the adoption of AI-based solutions allows a significant reduction of the average waiting time per request, fostering the application, enrollment, and integration of foreign students coming from a variety of different countries. We develop separate chatbot systems to handle FAQs and manage inquiries submitted through the university’s ticketing system. We explore the use of intent-based and generative approaches as well as a combination of the two. Our findings indicate that the intent-based approach excels in handling FAQs and well-defined tickets, whereas the generative-only strategy is more suitable for open-ended requests.