In private universities across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, admissions counsellors share a common struggle. Interestingly, their biggest complaint is not about difficult students or competitive rivals. It is simply about pure message volume.
The exact same questions arrive every single day across every channel. Prospective students constantly ask about tuition fees, application deadlines, required documents, and processing times. Granted, these questions are completely legitimate because students truly need these answers. However, answering them repeatedly is not why an admissions counsellor chose a career in higher education.
The real work requires time, deep attention, and a genuine human presence. Specifically, these are the critical conversations that actually determine whether a student enrolls, stays, and eventually recommends the institution. For instance, a counsellor needs time to talk a hesitant first-generation student through their fears about leaving home. Similarly, an academic advisor must help a struggling second-year student find a strong reason to continue. In addition, a programme coordinator needs to build a real connection with a prospective postgraduate to turn a vague interest into a confirmed enrolment.
That deep relationship work cannot be automated. Nevertheless, the massive avalanche of routine inquiries drowning your team before they even get to those deep conversations absolutely can be.
The True Cost of Doing Everything Manually
According to a survey by Intelligent, 50% of higher education admissions offices are currently using AI in their review process. Furthermore, an additional 30% have active plans to incorporate it soon.
Clearly, the institutions moving fastest are not doing so because they have a massive budget. Instead, they are doing it because they have recognized a major structural problem. Admissions and student success teams are spending the majority of their hours on repetitive tasks that do not actually require their expertise.
For example, a counsellor who spends four hours answering WhatsApp inquiries about application deadlines loses four precious hours of productivity. Consequently, they cannot have the deep conversations that convert a hesitant prospect into a confirmed student. In the same way, a student services officer who spends mornings triaging the same FAQ messages faces a huge disadvantage. As a result, they cannot spend those mornings identifying the second-year student who is quietly disengaging before they suddenly drop out.
Ultimately, this volume problem is not a staffing issue. On the contrary, it is a prioritization problem, and AI is the exact tool that makes correct prioritization possible.
What Changes When AI Handles the Volume
This shift is not about removing the human element from the student relationship. Rather, it is about protecting your human staff for the specific moments that actually require them.
When Agentic AI Chatbot Mimin handles inbound inquiries across WhatsApp and Instagram DM, it answers routine questions instantly. It manages programme information, tuition fees, application deadlines, and document requirements at any hour in multiple languages. Therefore, a prospective student in Jakarta who messages at 11 PM about intake dates receives an accurate response immediately. Likewise, a student in Kuala Lumpur who asks a voice question about a language requirement gets a quick answer from Voice AI Mimin without waiting for the office to open.
To be clear, none of this replaces the counsellor. Instead, it ensures that the counsellor steps in with full context and real capacity to help when a conversation genuinely needs a human. Thus, when an applicant wrestles with a complex financial decision, the counsellor is not drained by a backed-up inbox of unanswered FAQs.
This handoff matters immensely. When the AI passes a conversation to a human agent, it brings all data with it. It shows exactly what the student asked, what they were told, and where they stand in their journey. Consequently, the counsellor does not start from scratch but from a position of already knowing the student.
The Relationship Work Only Humans Can Do
In higher education, the relationship between an institution and its students determines vital outcomes. No algorithm can generate these results on its own. Indeed, humans must decide whether a hesitant student enrolls, whether a struggling student stays, or whether a graduate recommends the programme to others next year.
According to Liaison's 2025 analysis of AI adoption in higher education, institutions are seeing measurable gains in both enrolment and retention. Crucially, these successful schools are the ones redesigning how their teams spend time. They are moving people away from high-volume, low-complexity tasks and toward genuine student relationships.
The AI does not build that relationship. Instead, it creates the perfect conditions in which the humans can actually step in and do so effectively.
Specifically, this technology directly enables university teams to achieve the following:
- Instant Responses: Answer every inbound inquiry immediately across WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and web chat so no prospect moves on to a competitor.
- Natural Voice AI: Handle voice-based inquiries effortlessly for students who prefer speaking over typing in multiple languages without requiring office hours.
- Refocused Staff: Free counsellors and advisors to focus entirely on conversations that need them most, such as at-risk students or high-intent postgraduate prospects.
- Seamless Context Handoff: Pass conversations to human staff with full context pre-loaded so the counsellor can start exactly where the conversation already is.
Let AI Support Your Team
The universities building genuine, lasting student relationships across Southeast Asia are not necessarily the ones with the most AI. Rather, they are the ones that have figured out where AI ends and where their people begin. Above all, they have protected that boundary carefully.
Let the AI answer the deadline question. Meanwhile, let your counsellors answer the questions that truly matter: why this university, why this programme, and why now. Let AI do the follow-up and start your 7-day trial with Mimin today.
ABOUT MIMIN
Mimin is a platform that helps businesses to create conversational customer journeys with Artificial Intelligence. With Mimin, businesses can effortlessly build chat journeys and establish a positive customer experience.
The applications that can be generated include, amongst others, the ease of running chat commerce, chat campaigns, customer automation, omnichannel inbox, and Agentic-AI chatbot.
With Mimin, businesses can deliver superior customer experiences, strengthen customer relationships, and build stronger customer loyalty.
Learn more about Mimin by contacting:
Mimin
PT. Admin Pintar Kita
Phone/WhatsApp: +62 856 0322 5212
Email: halo@mimin.io
