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El Camino College is a community college in southern California serving more than 20,000 students, from school leavers to adult learners. Connecting with such a broad audience had become increasingly difficult using traditional outreach methods.
When Breeanna Bond was asked to build a call centre for the college, she expected to rely on spreadsheets and manual scripts. That changed when Gecko was recommended by a neighbouring college. El Camino launched its Gecko-powered contact centre in 2022, replacing Excel-based processes with automated workflows.
The team began with outbound calling campaigns focused on admissions, enrolment completion and school relations. Calls were personalised and practical, helping students complete applications, understand eligibility for scholarships and register for orientation while still on the phone.
As the team explored Gecko’s wider capabilities, the call centre evolved into a full contact centre. Calls were supported by SMS and email follow-ups, creating a joined-up experience for students. Over time, the volume scaled dramatically, with nearly 50,000 calls and more than 2.3 million texts sent annually.
Phone outreach proved especially effective for focused campaigns. Scholarship calls, for example, generated more applications than the college had seen in years. “A lot of students don’t even realise they’re eligible,” Breeanna explains. “Those phone calls are generating more scholarship applicants than we’ve had in years.”
Gecko workflows also transformed event management. The team can now track invitations, RSVPs and attendance, send reminders automatically and calculate yield rates for each event. These workflows are reused across departments, from counselling appointments to financial aid and orientation.
Gecko has also helped El Camino combat fraudulent enrolments. Rather than sharing sensitive information over the phone, staff use Gecko to send secure links via text or email, directing students to the correct forms and departments.
Training new staff is straightforward. Many contact centre agents are student workers who quickly learn how to build scripts, workflows and templates. “They quickly pick it up,” Breeanna says, freeing her to focus on strategy rather than setup.
All outreach now comes from a single Gecko number, building familiarity and trust. Students recognise the number, are more likely to answer calls and can easily call back without searching for contact details.
El Camino’s experience challenges the assumption that phone calls are no longer effective. With a 55% answer rate and millions of messages sent each month, Gecko has shown that calls, when combined with SMS and email, remain a powerful way to engage students and close the loop faster.
“With Gecko workflows, I can now create event campaigns, which list people as invited, accepted and attended. I can send out event reminders and I can generate yield rates that show how many people were invited, how many RSVPed and how many showed up,”