Optimising your Assistant: Reducing staff queries

Unibuddy Assistant is designed to provide accurate, high-level information to prospective students and pass more detailed or personal queries to staff or ambassadors when necessary. However, we of course understand that this doesn't work for everyone! Some institutions may prefer to minimise referrals to staff, to reduce workload and encourage more self-service from their prospective cohort.

Below are some tried and tested recommendations to help you configure and optimise your Assistant to resolve more queries independently.

Improve Web Content Searchability

Unibuddy Assistant refers to your publicly available web content - as directed by you and your team. You have the option to add specific exclusions, and also to choose the scope of what your Assistant will read and refer to as it searches for relevant information.

Implementing the Assistant has revealed to many of our partners where they might be able to strengthen their website content and structure to help Assistant - and prospects - quickly find answers.

💭 It's worth considering - if your Assistant cannot easily navigate your web structure to find answers - will your prospects be experiencing difficulties too?

Below you'll find recommendations that we have seen work across our university partners:

Conduct a web content audit using your University Dashboard data, under Assistant > Analytics > Overview – review any queries marked “not in the knowledge base” - these are queries the Assistant could not find the answer to.
Ensure key information is easily accessible (e.g. entry requirements, course info, scholarships, deadlines).
Avoid content buried in PDFs or behind logins.
Use clear headings and straightforward language, free from student recruitment/marketing jargon.
Review metadata and URL structure to improve your content discoverability.

💡 Tip: Pair this with your institution’s marketing or web team (as applicable) to align web UX and SEO with AI engagement.

Use a Generic Team Contact

If you'd like to reduce disruption to frontline staff, provide your Unibuddy Assistant with a generic team email instead of allowing the Assistant to refer to individual Staff Ambassadors.

Example: [email protected]

This keeps the enquiry centralised without creating direct dependency on individuals.

You can do this simply and easily in your University Dashboard. Go to Assistant > Configuration > Staff point of contact > Add point of contact +.

📝 Please note: If you add a Staff point of contact, this will override your Staff Ambassadors. The Assistant will always direct to this point of contact when prospects ask to be connected to a staff member.

Add Custom Response Rules

Use the custom response rule option in your University Dashboard to instruct your Unibuddy Assistant to avoid referring to Staff (and/or Ambassadors), unless essential. You can read more on customising your response rules here.

Suggested response rule:

“Only refer queries to staff contact if question is about case-specific admission status or document handling. For all other queries, suggest users visit {this FAQ page}.”

The linked page you include in your custom response rule could refer to:

A self-help FAQ webpage
A student-facing knowledge base
A landing page created specifically for your Unibuddy Assistant with resources, links, deadlines, and contacts.

Regularly Analyse Patterns + Trends

From your University Dashboard, you'll be able to:

Review Impact and Analytics across time periods.
Update your response rules based on your data: answers not found in the knowledge base, liked or disliked messages, or feedback included in student response ratings.

Create a quarterly optimisation cycle:

Review University Dashboard analytics
Spot unanswered questions
Create new web content or update FAQs
Adjust your Assistant's custom response rules

Additional Optimisation Strategies and Ideas

Strategy	Benefit
Use consistent terminology across website and Assistant for improved matching	Better AI understanding
Break down large webpages into smaller topic pages	Improves scanning accuracy
Include hyperlinks in custom Assistant responses	Encourages self-service

Your Assistant Optimisation Checklist

✔ Improve website content clarity & visibility
✔ Use a generic staff contact instead of individual Staff Ambassadors
✔ Create custom response rules to limit staff handover
✔ Regularly audit “not found in knowledge-base” queries
✔ Enhance website FAQs and link them directly in Assistant responses
✔ Analyse analytics and refine strategy quarterly