The Challenge: Scaling Exam Support Without Losing Calls
- Five human agents covering roughly 700 monthly exam support requests
- Calls lost during demand peaks
- Forced to pull agents from another business unit to cover overflow
- Cost per contact stuck at $1.50
- Most incoming questions were Level 1 inquiries that didn’t need a human
British Council’s exam support team was running a tight operation that couldn’t flex with demand. Five human agents handled roughly 700 requests a month across WhatsApp, email, and phone. During peak periods, the team had to borrow agents from another business unit, and calls still slipped through. An earlier chatbot rollout on WhatsApp had shown that around 80% of customer questions were Level 1 inquiries that could be automated, which made voice the obvious next channel to address.
The Solution: Voice AI Agents Across Five Countries
Dapta built British Council a voice AI system that answers incoming exam support calls, resolves Level 1 inquiries directly, and escalates only the cases that need a human.
- Voice AI agent answers incoming exam support calls around the clock
- Resolves the Level 1 inquiries that make up the bulk of the volume
- Escalates the remaining cases to a small human team
- A single Spanish prompt deployed across five countries, with only country-specific URLs and addresses changing
- Continuously iterated to push the containment rate higher
- Complemented by Diana, a text agent for asynchronous channels
The first agent went live in around 15 days. The customer service team led the rollout, with Dapta acting as the implementation partner rather than a self-service vendor. After a successful pilot in Mexico, British Council scaled the same solution to Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Argentina in about three months, using a single prompt that adapts to each country’s specifics.
The Results: 80% Automated, 35% Lower Cost, Five Countries Live
- 80% of the exam support workflow automated by the voice AI
- Customer sentiment positive or neutral in over 90% of interactions
- Cost per contact down 35%, from $1.50 to $0.98
- Over 4,500 calls connected to exam customers across the region
- Human team reduced to two agents handling only AI-escalated calls
- 79% containment rate on the Spanish prompt, with active iteration pushing it higher
- Next on deck: expansion to Brazil and Canada, outbound campaigns for another business unit, and AI lead qualification
With Dapta, British Council turned exam support from a capacity problem into a scalable system. The team freed up four out of five agents, lowered cost per contact by 35%, and built a regional platform that any new country or business line can plug into. Brazil and Canada are next, along with outbound campaigns and AI lead qualification for the broader organization.