It’s been another great month at Ivy! We love getting fun questions from our users, and we're excited to share them with you. Here are some of our favorite questions from the month of June.

As the age of automation unfolds, employers seek to fill a growing number of positions that support artificial intelligence. Systems that leverage Machine and Deep Learning help companies improve their performance, but they present a unique challenge. While hiring managers value relevant experience, it can be difficult to find experienced candidates when the technology is so new. Likewise, young adults entering the workforce must overcome the age-old challenge of how to gain experience. Having the right information in your career center can help solve both of these challenges at once.

Every summer, anxious students inundate the Financial Aid Office with questions, and the staff are spread thin. As the school year approaches and tuition bills come due, students want frequent status updates, especially when they'll receive their financial aid. It can be difficult for  financial aid staff to provide individualized student attention, although that is often what students want and need. We've analyzed the 9 most popular topics asked to our financial aid chatbots to offer you insight into your students' most common questions. This way, you can anticipate your students' needs and, more importantly, explore solutions that will ease the burdens of summer rush. 

An Inside Look into Chatbot Maintenance with Human Supervised Artificial Intelligence

When a student starts college, they are often faced with academic and social challenges. At times, they may feel stumped. Well, sometimes our chatbots get stumped, too.  And just like any student, our bots are constantly learning!  Here’s a preview of what we do behind the scenes at Ivy. To explain how it works, we use a university setting as a metaphor, where the bot is the student and our maintenance team are the professors!

Here's what to do when your bot gets stumped.

Here's a typical scenario:  It's 8:00pm on Wednesday and a prospective student is working on their admissions application.  They've searched your website high and low but can't figure out if they are eligible for a discounted application fee because of their veteran status.  They see your chatbot and ask it the question.  Unfortunately, your bot doesn't know this information yet and gets stumped.  Gracefully handling this scenario is essential for inspiring confidence in your bot and attracting return users. 

10 Funniest Questions From May 2019

Users often ask our Ivy chatbots some interesting questions. Sometimes we get a good laugh, and sometimes we learn something new. Here are 10 of our favorite questions from the past month, and our team’s creative responses.

Your Playbook to Stop Summer Melt For First Generation And At-Risk Students

Up to 40% of incoming freshman students, especially those from first-generation and low-income families, confirm intent to enroll in college but fail to attend¹. This phenomenon, called “Summer Melt”, is a persistent problem in higher education. Luckily, text messaging campaigns have proven effective in engaging this vulnerable population and providing students with the support necessary to “stay in the game”.

As you know, Ivy is deeply committed to providing the best experience possible for end users and administrators.  This week we launched the new student experience which has an improved widget for your website as well as a brand new chat user interface. 

Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and virtual assistants, is permeating the world of business. McKinsey & Company reports that early adopters of these technologies are 3.5 times more likely to anticipate a growing profit margin, and Forbes states that by the year 2022, a majority of AI products will be used to complete repetitive, consumer facing tasks. This allows your current staff to focus on more complex and unique situations.

Introducing Ivy's New Query Suggestion Tool
Let's face it, sometimes our users don't ask questions in the way we expect them.  Their questions often have typographical errors or even use different terminology.  In these cases the bot, of course has a greater likelihood of failure ... but not anymore!  Today, Ivy launched a new query suggestion tool to help solve this problem.