Case Study: Strategic Education Inc boosts student support with Google for Education

Strategic Education’s virtual assistant now handles 93% of student support chat requests online

Strategic Education Inc (SEI), through Strayer University, needed a way to provide fast, around-the-clock student support for busy adult learners who often had questions outside normal business hours. Google for Education helped the team use Google Cloud machine-learning tools, including Dialogflow and Google Compute Engine, to power Irving, an AI-based personal assistant that could answer common student questions online.

With Google for Education’s solution, Irving now handles 93% of student support chat requests online and has managed more than 740,000 conversations. The assistant is trained on about 1,500 topics, frees staff to focus on more complex issues, and has improved student satisfaction, with 89% saying Irving helps solve issues easily and 93% saying they would recommend it to others.

Strategic Education Inc

Daniel McCarthy

VP for Emerging Technology and Irving’s Original Lead Developer