How University of Arizona Eller College of Management resolved over three-fourths of student inquiries & optimized recruitment with AI

About University of Arizona Eller College of Management

The Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona is a top-ranked public business school based in Tucson, Arizona. With a growing portfolio of graduate programs and a competitive applicant pool, Eller offers 26 academic programs including 10 undergraduate majors and 16 graduate programs.

The challenge: Optimize and scale prospective and current student journeys with a small team

With a small team and high expectations, Eller needed a scalable way to engage with thousands of prospective students personally and efficiently. Prospective students were increasingly researching programs after work hours, expecting immediate, personalized answers to their questions. Repetitive inquiries about admissions, deadlines, and tuition strained staff time and slowed response rates. A large international student population added another layer of complexity, requiring robust multilingual support.

Compounding this challenge was the Eller website itself: content was dense, navigation was tricky, and prospective students often couldn’t find what they needed quickly. The team needed a solution that made critical information more accessible while elevating the user experience.

The solution: Implement AI-powered support to scale personalized user journeys and discover student experience trends

Savanah Whitney, Associate Director, MBA & Graduate Recruitment at Eller College of Management, led the launch of Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty (formerly Ivy.ai’s chatbot solution), configuring a multilingual chatbot across all graduate program pages.

To tailor the experience, she created custom chat introductions for each program, added buttons as a guide to streamline navigation and surface student intent, leveraged Ivy & Ocelot’s context setting to improve conversational relevance, and embedded video content to boost engagement. The chatbot instantly connected students to next steps — whether it was explaining tuition, walking through the application process, or linking to advising resources. For example, prior to implementing Ivy & Ocelot, Eller College received recurring questions due to inconsistent cost displays. Once they revised the content for clarity and consistency, those inquiries dropped significantly.

Using real-time data, Savanah and her team identified common questions, misunderstandings, and behavioral trends. This informed a series of website updates, including a critical change: standardizing how tuition and fees were displayed across all programs. Previously, inconsistent presentation of costs led to student confusion and follow-up questions. After the updates, related inquiries dropped significantly.

Chatbot insights also revealed key behavioral trends that helped Eller reimagine its digital strategy. While mobile traffic dominated website visits, most engaged chatbot users were on desktop, suggesting prospective students conduct serious research on larger screens. That data directly influenced the team’s layout, content length, and page design strategy.

Solution spotlight

Gravyty provides AI-powered solutions that connect and support the entire student and donor lifecycle. Serving over 2,700 education and nonprofit organizations, Gravyty helps institutions foster deeper connections, enhance engagement, and drive lasting impact. 

Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty empowers enrollment teams to create always-on, high-touch communication—without increasing staff workload. From multilingual chatbot support to data-powered content improvements, Ivy & Ocelot helps higher education institutions like Eller drive meaningful engagement, streamline application support, and ultimately increase enrollment yield. 

Want to increase enrollment yield without increasing staff workload? Learn more to see how Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty can transform your student engagement strategy.