The Full Story
Pikes Peak State College supports a diverse student population across four campuses in Colorado Springs. Communicating effectively with students from recruitment through to graduation requires tools that are both flexible and efficient.
Before adopting Gecko, the college relied on several different software platforms, each with its own licences, training and support teams. Initially, the plan was to introduce Gecko simply as a chatbot. But once the team explored the wider platform, the opportunity became clear. “We realised that if we switched to Gecko, we could get rid of three other software platforms,” says Krissy Trujillo, Assistant Director of Communication Technology, Marketing and Communications.
Those platforms were not designed specifically for higher education and often imposed limits on contacts and messaging. “We could spend a whole day segmenting audiences in Excel,” Krissy explains. Moving to Gecko removed those constraints. “Cutting our ties with our old software and moving to Gecko saved us thousands of dollars in subscription fees and 250 hours a year for each campaign series.”
The college began with Gecko’s chatbot, email and SMS broadcasting. The chatbot was later upgraded with AI, delivering a dramatic improvement in performance. “In the first month without AI our message success rate was 62%,” says Krissy. “When we added ChatGPT, it jumped to 95% and now we’re at 100%.” Keeping the website content up to date ensures the chatbot can always deliver accurate answers. The bot is also bilingual, supporting students in both English and Spanish.
Gecko has transformed how the team handles audience segmentation and personalisation. What once took hours now takes minutes. “We plug all the data into one template,” Krissy explains, using Liquid coding to personalise content based on campus, course, motivation and language. This allows the team to send a single, highly tailored message instead of multiple versions.
The impact of this approach has been clear. During the Fall 2024 registration cycle, personalised campaigns built in Gecko increased open rates, registrations and enrolments. Staff now spend less time managing tools and more time creating meaningful communications.
For Krissy and her team, Gecko has become central to how they work. “It’s the least painful implementation I’ve ever done,” she says. “It’s flexible, fast and it quickly pays dividends.”