Aug 21 2025
How Montcalm Community College Gets Higher-Than-Average Reply Rates With Coach-Led Texting
How Gwinnett Tech Supports 13,000 Students With a Four-Person Call Center
TL;DR
Gwinnett Technical College has grown enrollment more than 40% in five years, to just under 13,000 students, while its call center is still four staff members and a manager. The college has used Mongoose Text since 2017 and added AI-powered Web Chat, called “Griff,” trained only on its own website. Griff answers routine questions around the clock, flags gaps in the college’s content, and helped Gwinnett Tech reach every registered student on the first day of classes, when email couldn’t.
- 40%+ enrollment growth in five years
- Web Chat trained on the college’s own site
- 4-person call center, ~13,000 students
- First-day crisis handled by text
Download the full case study
Gwinnett Technical College is a public two-year college in Georgia serving just under 13,000 students, and it’s still growing.
“We are just under 13,000 students. We’ve grown by over 40% in the last five years, which is a very unique situation for higher education at this time. We feel very privileged that students are choosing GTC out of all the colleges in Georgia, that they’re coming to us, and that demand is not going down.”
– Carolyn Duven, Executive Director of Student Support Services, Gwinnett Technical College
Growth like that puts pressure on a team. Gwinnett Tech needed to support more students without losing the personal, human approach its student support model is built on. A Mongoose partner since 2017, the college uses Text and AI-powered Web Chat across admissions, registration, financial aid, and student success.
The challenge: More students than staff
Enrollment was outpacing staffing, and email wasn’t reaching students. They were missing deadlines, overlooking key steps, and sending urgent questions after hours, while teams juggled heavy call volume and siloed systems.
“We are a publicly funded institution, and we share the pain points that a lot of institutions have. When you’ve got higher enrollment than you have staff, adding new technology and trying to stay current with how our students are receiving information is important. We all know students don’t read their emails.”
– Betsy Harris-Brackett, Executive Director, Gwinnett Technical College
The college had also tried a chatbot from another vendor, and it hadn’t worked.
“When we ventured into chat with another product, the smart bot that had pre-loaded scripts that we could train, it was not successful. The bot was not smart. Students don’t ask full sentence questions. They’ll say things like ‘English classes,’ and that bot would respond with ‘Complete your FAFSA by this date.’ It was just really nonsensical kinds of responses.”
– Carolyn Duven
Training that tool meant building every prompt and response by hand, and the team didn’t have time for it. “That was a huge lift,” Carolyn said.
Text as the daily backbone
Gwinnett Tech started with Mongoose Text for orientation, deadline, and registration reminders. Over time, it spread across Student Affairs. Teams use segments, CSV uploads, and scheduled Smart Messages to reach the right students at the right time.
“We use Mongoose daily in our interactions with students, replying to text messages and engaging. It has become integrated into what we do across the Division of Student Affairs.”
– Carolyn Duven
Web Chat grounded in Gwinnett Tech’s own content
After the last experience, Carolyn said there was “a lot of fear around getting another smart bot.” What changed the team’s mind was generative AI that learns from the college’s own website. So they put it to the test.
“When we had the demonstration, we created our website called ‘Break the Bot’ to test it. We started asking questions to see what we would get. That really sold us on the quality of the product and how easy it is to train it.”
– Carolyn Duven
Gwinnett Tech calls its Web Chat “Griff.” Because Griff pulls from the college’s own website and content, not the open internet, the team stays in control of what it says. Carolyn added,
“I like the large language model that we use with Griff because it’s dependent on the information that we provide. It’s not pulling from Google or anything else. That makes us feel really comfortable because we have control over how the bot is being trained and what information it has access to.”
24/7 support from a small call center
Gwinnett Tech’s call center is four staff members and a manager, answering every phone call and managing chat for thousands of students during business hours. Web Chat now handles routine questions, from registration timelines to financial aid, before handing off to a person, and it’s there after hours too.
“Students have to go through these prompts before we’re going to get to a human. So students don’t have to talk to folks to ask basic questions.”
– Carolyn Duven
Chat has also become a way to spot gaps in the college’s own information. When Griff couldn’t answer something well, the team knew the content needed work. She added,
“Every time we found gaps, we created a training document and asked those departments to update the information. The bot is taking what we’ve provided; it’s not magically creating new information. We can use the bot as a reflection of what students have access to and use it as a tool to help us improve.”
“My goal would be that Griff, our bot, is not another chatbot that doesn’t answer the question. We can use the tool and the training to ensure the bot provides an accurate, clear, and concise reflection of information students have access to.”
A first-day crisis, handled by text
When Gwinnett Tech moved to a new registration system, problems on the first day of classes kept students from getting into the learning management system. No single department had the full picture, students were confused, and leadership needed to reach thousands of them right away. Email wasn’t an option: Microsoft caps each sender at 10,000 emails a day.
“Our IT folks were unable to send out 13,000 emails in a day because the system simply would not allow it. And so we, of course, immediately turned to Mongoose.”
– Carolyn Duven
Text became the way to reach everyone at once. Carolyn noted,
“I don’t know where we would’ve been if we didn’t have Mongoose because we needed to reach every single student who was registered in that moment.”
Staff watched the shared inbox, tagged conversations, searched by student name, and answered in real time. Students reported problems by text and chat, which gave leadership the information it needed to act.
“We also found out about issues as students reported things to us through Mongoose Text and Chat. We were able to escalate issues quickly as a result of sending out that bulk communication.”
“I don’t think we would’ve been able to respond or feel nearly as competent if we had not had Mongoose to communicate with students through all of those issues.”
– Carolyn Duven
Metrics that matter
The team doesn’t chase vanity metrics. It watches opt-outs, response rates, and long-term engagement, and uses Mongoose reporting to make the case to leadership.
“The low opt-out rates and high response rates when we send out Smart Messages are important. The number of students who will respond to a Smart Message a month later because it’s been sitting in their inbox, that’s important.”
– Carolyn Duven
What made the difference
Teams
Shared team inboxes mean students hear one consistent voice, even when several staff members are involved.
“We function in teams here at Gwinnett Tech, so the feature of the teams in Mongoose is essential. I can message a student, and I may have meetings all afternoon. Carolyn will see that the student has responded and take that interaction over the finish line.”
– Betsy Harris-Brackett
A real partnership
“I feel like we have a real partnership. The Mongoose team is great about being able to understand what we are saying we need. They’re very responsive. There’s never a stupid question.”
– Betsy Harris-Brackett
Looking ahead
Gwinnett Tech sees AI as an assistant for its team, not a replacement. Next up is help drafting texts, which today take three people to finalize, and Web Chat on more pages and in more departments. Carolyn said,
“Students can tell what’s real and what’s not. Maintaining that personal, human-centered communication will always be key.”
“If it’s our choice, we’d use Mongoose forever and always.”
– Carolyn Duven
What other colleges can take from Gwinnett Tech
Ground any AI chat in your own website and documents, and treat its misses as a list of pages to fix. Keep a person one step away for anything it can’t answer, and make sure you have a channel that can reach every student in a day when email can’t. That matters most at two-year colleges, where teams that don’t have the capacity for one more initiative still need to reach every student. If you’re sorting out how chat like Griff differs from AI agents, this FAQ on AI agents and chat for higher education walks through it.
Other colleges have built similar models. McLennan Community College uses Mongoose across 28 teams and saw an 8.7 percent enrollment increase, and Northwestern Oklahoma State pairs Web Chat with staff follow-up to support students after hours.
Get the full case study
For a three-page summary of Gwinnett Tech’s results to share with your team, download the Gwinnett Tech case study (PDF).
Want to see what Text and Web Chat could do for your student support teams? Book a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Gwinnett Tech support 13,000 students with a small team?
Why did Gwinnett Tech move beyond email?
How is Mongoose Web Chat different from their previous chatbot?
How does Gwinnett Tech keep Web Chat accurate?
How did texting help during the first-day crisis?
Does AI replace staff at Gwinnett Tech?
