WhatsApp for schools, colleges and coaching institutes
Endelir lets an admissions team answer every course enquiry on one WhatsApp number: a chat flow qualifies the student and collects counselling requests and documents, and fee and class reminders go out as approved templates. An admissions enquiry arrives at ten at night, from a parent, about a batch that starts in three weeks. Endelir puts every one of them on your institute's number in one shared inbox, collects what a counsellor needs before the call, and keeps the follow-up going until the student enrols or says no.
Admission season is a phone nobody can put down
Enquiries arrive from a hoarding, an ad, a friend who studied with you, and the website form nobody fills in properly. They land on a counsellor's personal phone, or on a handset at the front desk that is with whoever had it last. Half of them ask the same four things — fees, timings, the address, when the next intake starts — and each one is typed out again by hand.
The ones that matter are lost in the same pile. A serious enquiry for a course that fills in a fortnight waits three days for a reply. A parent who asked for a call back is never called. Documents come in as photographs to one person's chat, the fee reminder goes out only to the students somebody remembered, and when a counsellor leaves in June the whole enquiry list walks out with the phone.
One number for admissions, one thread per student
Endelir connects your institute's number to the WhatsApp Business Platform and puts every enquiry into a shared inbox. Admissions, the academic team and accounts each sign in as themselves, and each conversation can be assigned to a named counsellor, so an enquiry has an owner rather than a hope. Whoever opens the thread reads what was said before, including what the parent asked in April, so nobody starts again from "which course are you interested in?".
Around that, the repetitive work runs itself. Keyword replies answer fees, timings, the address and the next intake date in text you wrote, with the prospectus attached as a PDF. A chat flow asks the questions a counsellor would have asked — programme, intake, city, current qualification, student or parent — and writes each answer onto the contact record, then hands the conversation to the team that runs that programme. A wait step brings the follow-up back days later without anyone keeping a list. What Endelir does not do is decide anything academic: it holds no timetable, no seat count and no fee ledger, and it does not answer with an AI.
How it works
- 1 The enquiry arrives From a Click-to-WhatsApp ad, the button on your site, a QR code on the prospectus or a hoarding, or the number a former student passed on. For an ad, Endelir stores the referral id, the source type and id, the link and the headline against that message and the contact, so you know which campaign brought the family in.
- 2 The routine questions answer themselves Fees, batch timings, the address, the eligibility rule and the next intake go back as keyword replies, in wording your academic team approved, with the prospectus as a PDF.
- 3 A flow asks what the counsellor needs Which programme, which intake, which city or centre, the last qualification passed, and whether the person writing is the student or a parent. Every answer is saved against the contact.
- 4 It reaches the right person The flow assigns the conversation to the team that handles that programme or that centre, so a postgraduate enquiry does not sit in the school admissions queue.
- 5 A counselling call is agreed The flow collects the day and time that suit the family. Your own timetable decides whether a counsellor is free — Endelir holds no calendar. Once the slot is written down on your side, the confirmation and the reminder go out on the same thread.
- 6 Documents come back on the same thread Mark sheets, identity proof and photographs arrive as images or PDFs in the conversation, attached to the student rather than scattered across four phones.
- 7 Reminders keep the term running Fee instalments, the first class, the exam date and a parents' meeting go out as approved templates. A short feedback question a few weeks in tells you how the batch is finding it.
What this looks like in practice
A coaching institute with three centres runs ads for six weeks before each intake. Enquiries used to arrive on two counsellors' phones. The good ones were answered; the rest waited, and by the time somebody called back the student had joined the institute down the road.
Now the same number feeds one inbox. Fees, timings and the eligibility rule answer themselves within seconds, day or night, with the prospectus attached. Anything past that runs through a flow that asks the course, the intake, the centre and who is writing, then hands the conversation to the counsellor for that centre — already carrying the answers. A wait step nudges a family that went quiet after four days. When the student enrols, the same thread carries the fee reminder before each instalment, the joining details for the first class, and a question after a month asking how the batch is going. When a counsellor leaves, the conversations stay.
What happens when the student or parent replies
Works across education
What to know before you set it up
While a student or parent is writing to you, you can answer freely — there is a service window for exactly that. Starting a conversation yourself, or answering after that window has closed, uses a message template Meta has approved in advance. Keep the two intentions apart: "your second instalment of the fee is due on the 5th" and "your class moves to 4pm on Saturday" carry the facts of something the family has already signed up for, while "join the new weekend batch and save on the fee" is marketing. Marketing goes only to people who have opted in, and Endelir enforces that — it refuses a campaign to a contact with no recorded consent, and honours an opt-out on every later send. Treat that as a guard rail rather than an obstacle.
Three limits are worth knowing before you plan around them. Endelir holds no timetable and no seat count, so it cannot see that the Saturday batch is full or that a counsellor is already booked at four — it collects the request in full, and your own system or your own team decides. It does not collect fees: the payment link is yours, and the receipt comes from your accounts, not from the chat. And it does not answer with an AI — routine replies are wording you wrote and can edit, and anything else reaches a person. One more thing worth settling early: much of this correspondence is with parents about children, so agree internally whose number you hold, what you keep, and how long you keep it.
Two practical points about the number and the plan. Once a number is connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform it can no longer be used in the ordinary WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app on a handset, so many institutes take a fresh number for the admissions line and leave the old one with the front desk. And how many people can sign in, and how many contacts and messages each plan covers, is on the pricing page — the software enforces those counts exactly.
What to measure
- Enquiries received, and which ad or centre they came from
- How long an enquiry waits for its first reply
- How many were answered without a counsellor being involved
- Enquiries that reached a named counsellor, and how many are still unowned
- Counselling calls requested, confirmed and attended
- Applications completed and documents received
- Students who enrolled after the follow-up sequence
- Feedback answers collected in the first weeks of a batch
Related
Questions people ask
Can we handle admission enquiries on WhatsApp?
Yes, and that is the main reason institutes come to Endelir. Your institute's number is connected once, and every enquiry — from an ad, a QR code on the prospectus, the website button or word of mouth — lands in one shared inbox instead of a counsellor's personal phone. Each conversation is assigned to a named person, so an enquiry has an owner. Keyword replies handle fees, timings, the address and the next intake date in wording your academic team approved, and a chat flow asks the rest before a counsellor spends time on the call. The conversations belong to your workspace, so a counsellor leaving in the middle of admission season does not take the enquiry list with them.
Is this an admission chatbot?
It is automation you write, not an AI that improvises. Two things do the work. Keyword replies answer the questions that have one correct answer — fees, batch timings, eligibility, the address, the next intake — in text you typed and can change. Chat flows ask a short set of questions, save each answer onto the student's record, and hand the conversation to the right team. Endelir does not generate answers with an AI, which is deliberate rather than a gap: an invented answer about eligibility or a scholarship is worse than no answer. Anything the flow cannot cover goes to a person in the inbox, and a person taking over pauses the automation on that conversation so the family is not answered twice by two different things.
Can students book a counselling appointment through the chat?
They can request one, and the flow collects everything the request needs — the programme, the centre, and the day and time that suit them — so it reaches the inbox complete. What Endelir does not do is decide whether a counsellor is free. It holds no calendar and no timetable. Your team checks the real diary and confirms in the same conversation, or a flow step calls your own scheduling system and brings the answer back into the chat before anything is promised. Once the slot exists on your side, the confirmation goes back on the thread, and the reminder is sent either by a wait step in the flow or by your own system calling the Endelir API when the time comes.
Can we send fee reminders and class reminders?
Yes. A reminder that carries the facts of something the student has already enrolled in — the instalment due on the 5th, the class that moved to Saturday, the exam date, the parents' meeting — is sent as an approved template and sits comfortably in the utility category. Endelir does not collect the money. Your own payment link goes into the message, the payment happens with your provider, and the receipt comes from your accounts. Endelir is not told when a fee is paid, so it does not know to stop reminding on its own: either update the contact when your office reconciles, or have your fee system call Endelir's API and let that decide who still gets the next reminder.
Can parents and students both be part of the conversation?
Each WhatsApp number is its own contact and its own thread, so a parent writing from their phone and a student writing from theirs are two conversations. The flow asks who is writing and saves the answer, and your team can note on each contact which student the enquiry is about, so a counsellor opening either thread can see the connection before the call. In practice most institutes keep the parent's number as the one they send fee and attendance reminders to, and talk to the student on the other thread.
Can students send documents like mark sheets on the same thread?
Yes. Images and PDFs sent to your number arrive in the conversation and stay attached to that student's record, so a mark sheet, an identity proof and a photograph are in one place instead of in three counsellors' phone galleries. Your team can send documents the same way — the prospectus, the fee structure, the offer letter, the joining instructions. Two things to be clear about: Endelir does not verify a document, and it is not your student records system. It is where the document arrived and where anyone on your team can find it again, which for most institutes is the part that was missing.
Can we message our whole enquiry list about a new batch?
You can message the people who agreed to hear from you. Contacts are organised into groups — an intake, a centre, a programme, last year's enquiries — and a campaign goes to a group, immediately or scheduled, using an approved marketing template. Endelir checks consent before it sends and refuses contacts who never gave it, and an opt-out is honoured on every later campaign. Purchased or scraped lists have no place here, and there is no way to make Endelir send to one. How many contacts a campaign can reach depends on your plan, and the software enforces that count exactly; the limits are on the pricing page.
Give students and parents one organised route from enquiry to enrolment
Connect your institute's number and put admissions, the academic team and accounts on the same thread. We set the number up with you on a call, before your next intake opens.
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