ABOUT
Kaplan International is a global education provider. It prepares international students for admission to degree courses globally with its 40+ partner universities.
INDUSTRY
Higher Education
CRM
Salesforce
Challenge
Kaplan International needed a way to reach every prospective student with persistent follow-up, not just the ones sales advisors could prioritize.
Kaplan was getting thousands of student inquiries monthly, but the team faced a bottleneck in following up on and converting these leads:
Overwhelming Inquiry Volume. Student advisors had to deal with a high volume of new leads and could only focus on prospects that were the most likely to convert.
Dead Leads. Advisors would attempt contact a few times but had to move on if leads were unresponsive.
No Scalable Solution For 24/7 Outreach. It was unrealistic for advisors to operate 24/7, yet some leads were only reachable outside of working hours, or were in other time zones.
"Because of the sheer volume of inquiries that we get, we're often unable to give the kind of attention to all of the leads that they warrant. Our sales teams will have to prioritize leads they consider the “hottest” — the most likely to convert. This means we're not giving due diligence to the entire stack of inquiries coming through."
Claire Priestley
Group CIO for Kaplan International
Solution
Havana automated multi-channel follow-up for dead leads, handing over leads to human advisors only when marked as qualified and interested.
After exploring automation and AI solutions, Kaplan International chose Havana — a purpose-built AI agent for student enrollment that stood out from other generic AI solutions.
Havana executed an efficient, automated workflow for re-engaging dead leads:
Automated Multi-Channel Outreach. Havana retrieved 12,000 dead leads from Salesforce and began multi-channel outreach via phone and email—these were channels Kaplan prioritized, while other customers also have the AI text or WhatsApp students.
Follow-up. If students didn’t pick up the phone, Havana sent personalized follow-up emails referencing the attempted call. Havana would attempt calls again at different times.
Natural Conversation & Qualification. Havana conducted natural conversations on phone calls, answering student questions and qualifying leads.
Intelligent Routing. If a student was no longer interested, Havana would automatically update their status in Salesforce. If a student expressed interest, Havana would walk them through booking an appointment with a human advisor and update Salesforce accordingly.
Seamless Handoff: Human advisors received qualified, interested leads with full context of past conversations. Advisors would continue assisting the student all the way till they have sent in an application.
"Havana really took the time to first understand our internal processes. They made sure that results were tracked so that marketers could access and share them with the rest of the organization."
Andrew Loy
Director of Marketing & Communications, Kaplan Singapore
Results & Impact
Kaplan revived 9% of dead leads which generated $2M+ in tuition revenue.
Havana has delivered significant results for Kaplan:
9% of dead leads were revived and expressed interest in meeting with student advisors.
$2M+ in tuition revenue generated from the 12,000 dead leads that would have otherwise been abandoned.
An Empowered Sales Team. Advisors now focus on high-value enrollment conversations, letting Havana handle repetitive outreach and initial qualification.
Scaling the Solution. Encouraged by the strong results, Kaplan is now selecting additional channels from Havana’s platform, including Whatsapp and other messaging tools, that international students prefer.
“We augment our teams; we don’t see it as an either-or. We see it as an “and.” What we do is use our AI Agent to hand over at the point where it’s most critical for humans to be in direct contact with potential leads.”
Group CIO for Kaplan International
Conclusion
For educational institutions or other organizations facing similar scaling challenges, Kaplan’s experience shows how AI Agents can transform enrollment operations. Havana’s AI was able to turn dormant inquiries into real conversations and revenue.
“There are solutions which appear to be similar, that sit within contracts of software that we already have. So why don’t we use those? Because they’re bolt-ons, not the core business, so we don’t get the personalized service. With Havana, we’ve actually brought things to fruition.”
Alex Chevrolle
Managing Director, Kaplan Singapore
