Chennai: The number of Indian students opting for virtual [online] study abroad counselling services is on the rise as confirmed by a recent poll conducted by Hotcourses India, an IDP company, on their website, which showed 73 per cent of their users leaning towards their virtual overseas education services.
The poll was directed towards Indian students looking for study abroad assistance on Hotcourses India’s website, asking them about their preferred method for both, counselling and application assistance required for overseas admissions. The poll showed overwhelming responses from 580 users, out of which 419 chose the online method and only 161 chose the traditional face-to-face method.
Some of their popular online study abroad services are ‘ultimate search’, which helps in matching students’ profiles against a list of numerous courses and universities abroad; personalised ‘study abroad plan’; ‘IELTS practice test’, comprising the Reading and Listening modules; ‘visa assistance’, along with mock interview preparations and ‘SOP/LOR assistance’.
Hotcourses India’s online services contributed a massive 95 per cent of the student enrolments achieved in 2016, thus showing the capability and effectiveness of virtual counselling and establishing the company as a Numero Uno consultancy in this field.
Moreover, these online services have been supplemented with a new chatbot release, with the sole aim of easing the evaluation process of students’ profiles and giving them real-time counselling experience. The USPs of this ‘bot’ are to provide a rich, personalised user experience through its natural language interface, which has pertinent questions, and registers instant responses on their website that reaches the counselling team in a short time.
Priyatham Rajagopalan, Chief Operating Officer of Hotcourses India, said: ” We care about students and are constantly looking for ways to improve our services for them. Our new chatbot feature, for instance, gives us a quick insight into what students want and where they stand, in a matter of a few minutes. All our services, as much as this one, have been created for and tailored to students’ needs. We know what works best for international admissions, given our experience in the international education industry. What the students need to do is reach out to us and our counsellors can take it from there.”
