Education
Using AI to Analyze and Improve Student Communications
Client
Curtin University Dubai
Industry
Education
Timeline
4 weeks
The Challenge
A leading tertiary education services provider managing multiple university partnerships wanted to improve the quality and effectiveness of student outreach by collections and finance team teams. Every day, hundreds of emails and messages were being sent to students — but there was no consistent way to measure tone, clarity, or conversion effectiveness. Thynker was brought in to apply AI and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze communication quality, identify what worked, and create data-backed frameworks for staff training and process improvement.
•High variability in communication tone and style across admissions teams and counselors
•No objective way to measure which types of outreach resulted in higher student engagement or conversions
•Thousands of messages being sent weekly with no centralized analysis or feedback loop
•Manual review of communications was time-consuming and prone to bias
Our Approach
Thynker developed a customized AI communication analysis framework that combined natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and machine learning classification to turn unstructured email data into actionable insights.
- •Cleaned and standardized the data for analysis, preserving privacy and compliance
- •Used transformer-based NLP models to analyze tone, clarity, empathy, and professionalism across all communications
- •Implemented a classification model that distinguished between "effective" and "ineffective" outreach patterns based on historical conversion data
- •Detected subtle communication traits — such as response latency, personalization depth, and emotional tone — that influenced lead conversion outcomes
- •Built a dashboard of communication effectiveness metrics, allowing managers to see trends across teams and campaigns
- •Extracted best-performing communication templates and tone styles, which were later used for counselor training
- •Created a feedback loop, where AI continuously evaluates new communications to provide improvement recommendations
- •Collected and anonymized thousands of email conversations and outreach messages
NLPTransformer ModelsSentiment AnalysisMachine Learning ClassificationData Analytics
Sample Output
{
"source_folder": "finance\\Payment link request",
"filename": "RE_ Payment link.msg",
"type": "msg",
"from": "Curtin University Dubai - Finance <[REDACTED_EMAIL]>",
"to": "\"[REDACTED_NAME] (Student)\" <[REDACTED_EMAIL]>; \"[REDACTED_EMAIL]\"",
"date": "2024-10-15 13:03:22+04:00",
"subject": "RE: Payment link",
"body": "Dear [REDACTED_NAME], Please find the attached receipt and cheque cancelled copy. Best Regards, [REDACTED_NAME], Finance Department Curtin University Dubai Tel | [REDACTED_PHONE] Email | [REDACTED_EMAIL] Web | www.curtindubai.ac.ae <http://www.curtindubai.ac.ae/> Dubai International Academic City Block 10 & 11, 4th Floor | P.O. Box 345031 Dubai, UAE From: Curtin University Dubai - Finance <[REDACTED_EMAIL]> Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2024 9:10 AM To: [REDACTED_NAME] (Student) <[REDACTED_EMAIL]> Cc: Curtin University Dubai - Finance <[REDACTED_EMAIL]> Subject: RE: Payment link Dear [REDACTED_NAME], Please be informed that the payment link has been sent to his Curtin email ID against cheque no [REDACTED_CHEQUE_NO] dated 15/10/2024 for the amount of AED 8,743.19/-. Kindly ensure to complete the payment by today to cancel the cheque. Best Regards, [REDACTED_NAME], Finance Department Curtin University Dubai Tel | [REDACTED_PHONE] Email | [REDACTED_EMAIL] Web | www.curtindubai.ac.ae Dubai International Academic City Block 10 & 11, Fourth Floor | P.O. Box 345031 Dubai, UAE From: [REDACTED_NAME] <[REDACTED_EMAIL]> Sent: Tuesday, 15 October 2024 8:09 AM To: Curtin University Dubai - Finance <[REDACTED_EMAIL]> Subject: Payment link Good morning, this is [REDACTED_NAME] student ID [REDACTED_ID], I'd like to request a payment link and put the cheque on hold please urgently. Regards, [REDACTED_NAME] Get Outlook for iOS <https://aka.ms/o0uekf>",
"evaluation": {
"customer_query": "[REDACTED_NAME], a student at Curtin University Dubai, requested a payment link and asked to put the cheque on hold urgently.",
"agent_reply": "[REDACTED_NAME] from the Finance Department informed the student that the payment link has been sent to the Curtin email ID against cheque no [REDACTED_CHEQUE_NO] dated 15/10/2024 for the amount of AED 8,743.19/-. The student was asked to complete the payment by the end of the day to cancel the cheque. In a subsequent email, [REDACTED_NAME] from the same department sent the receipt and a cancelled copy of the cheque.",
"tone": "Neutral",
"clarity": "Clear",
"resolution": "Resolved",
"professionalism_score": 9,
"suggested_improvement": "The agent's response was professional and clear. However, they could have provided a bit more information on how to use the payment link or what to do if there were any issues with the payment process."
}
}The Results
- ✓Identified key linguistic and stylistic patterns that correlated with 30–40% higher response and conversion rates
- ✓Provided data-driven insights for staff coaching and outreach training programs
- ✓Reduced manual review time by more than 90%, while increasing the consistency of student interactions
- ✓Helped the organization move from intuition-based outreach to evidence-based communication strategy
+80%
Uniformity improvement
Consistency
-92%
Time saved
Manual Review
+35%
Average increase
Response & Conversion Uplift
100%
Of staff trained using AI insights
Data-Driven Training Adoption
“
Thynker's communication analysis gave us something we've never had before: real data on what works in our student outreach. We can now train our teams based on evidence, not guesswork, and the results speak for themselves.
Ashwin Gautama, CFO
Curtin University Dubai
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