The Full Story
With more than 30,000 online students, eCampus at the University System of Georgia works with all 26 public higher education institutions across the state to deliver fully online courses and qualifications. Supporting students at this scale, many of whom study remotely alongside work, requires fast, reliable access to information at any time of day.
eCampus USG provides fully online core courses, known as e-core, and upper-level major courses, known as e-major. Students enrolled in these courses have access to a range of support services, including live chat and Gecko chatbots, which help with everything from contacting professors to submitting assignments. As Samuel Horsley, Student Success Manager, explains, “If you’re enrolled in any of our classes you have access to all of our customer service, help and support features, such as live chats, and our Gecko chatbots.”
In 2024, eCampus USG introduced Gecko’s ChatGPT-powered chatbots, creating two separate bots tailored specifically to e-core and e-major courses. The decision to use ChatGPT was straightforward. “It was decided that ChatGPT was better suited to combing each specific website for content and it didn’t require us to continually update our knowledge base,” says Horsley.
The chatbots sit on the front of the e-core and e-major websites and are available 24/7 to students, prospective students, faculty and visitors. As long as information is published on the site, the chatbot can answer related questions, ranging from course content to registration and faculty contacts. When needed, enrolled students can still access human support. “You can click the get help button and one of our human help-desk agents will take that between 8am and 8pm Monday through Friday,” Horsley explains.
Beyond supporting students directly, the chatbots have also become a valuable tool for live agents. eCampus USG’s support team includes both full-time staff and student workers, and agents regularly use the chatbot to help draft responses and locate information quickly. “Our live agents can use the chatbot to help them with their replies,” says Horsley. This has had a major impact on onboarding. Training new student workers, which previously took around a month, has been reduced to two weeks.
Usage of the chatbots has consistently exceeded expectations. “Our Gecko chatbots usage is about 35% higher than our live agent usage,” Horsley notes, adding that the bots have outpaced live agents every month for more than two years. Demand peaks during busy periods too, with the chatbots handling 37% more chats in January compared to August as students return for the spring semester.
Horsley also highlights how the chatbot continues to improve over time. “The Gecko chatbots have definitely evolved,” he says, noting that onboarding new partner institutions is now much faster than when everything had to be done in house. The hybrid model, combining AI with live agents, also helps ensure faster, more consistent responses across multiple conversations.
Next, eCampus USG plans to introduce Gecko’s text-to-chat feature, allowing students to access both chatbots and live agents directly from their phones. “All of us in eCampus USG only ever have good things to say about Gecko,” says Horsley. “We’re looking forward to seeing where it will take us next.”