How Centennial College turned website conversations into 5,000+ leads and 70+ enrollments in six months
Our recruitment no longer stops at five o'clock. Students get accurate answers from our own knowledge sources at any hour, and our teams start every morning with a list of prospective students who have already asked us to reach out.
The problem is familiar to anyone recruiting students. Prospective students find you through the website first, and they show up at all hours, from every time zone, asking about programs, requirements, tuition. The staff who can answer them work nine to five. Wait too long, and the student has usually applied somewhere else.
Centennial College went live with Capio Engage on March 19, 2026. Engage answers prospective students on the spot, straight from the institution's own information about programs, requirements, tuition, and intakes. It also pays attention while students browse: what they keep asking about, how close they sound to applying. When someone wants a follow-up, they leave a phone number or an email. That is the lead the recruitment team gets: a student who has already said, "contact me."
"I'm proud that we were Capio's first Engage partner. We have found the integration and immediate results have surpassed expectations. We've been able to turn anonymous website traffic into qualified leads, and Capio has been great at helping to turn our innovative blue sky ideas into reality, quickly. Really pleased with results so far this year, and happy to see our continuous expansion of the product together."
The challenge
A global front door, staffed nine to five
- Most questions arrive at night and on weekends, when nobody is at a desk.
- The questions repeat constantly: programs, requirements, tuition, deadlines, eligibility. Each one still matters to the student asking it.
- Students compare institutions in one sitting. An answer that takes days often arrives after they have moved on.
- Static contact forms say almost nothing about who a student is or what they want.
The solution
Instant answers from the institution's own data
- Engage sits on the institution's website and answers students the moment they ask, day or night.
- Answers come from the institution's verified content. A question about eligibility gets the institution's actual requirements, not a generic web answer.
- Students can talk to Engage on the website or on WhatsApp.
- Engage scores each visitor's engagement level based on intent, which tells the recruitment team who is ready to move.
- Engage's job ends at the lead. Outreach and everything after it stays in the institution's hands, through whatever channels it chooses. Several integration options are available to fit into your current technology landscape.
"Students build their shortlist in a single evening and expect answers in minutes, but most institutions respond in days. Centennial closed that gap, and 72 enrolled students started with a conversation on Engage."
The results
Open at every hour, in 170 countries
After six months, most conversations came in while the office was closed, visitors arrived from 170 countries, and roughly one in seven left a way to reach them.
When conversations happened
Domestic vs international engagement
Domestic (in Canada)
International (169 other countries)
- 58% of conversations happened outside business hours.
- 13% of conversations, about 7,500, came in through WhatsApp rather than the website.
- Visitors came from 170 countries. After Canada, the most engaged were India, Nigeria, the United States, Ghana, and Nepal.
- 5,000+ visitors shared a phone number or email, 14.5% of everyone who engaged. About one in four of those leads show medium or high intent, so the team knows who to call first.
The return
From conversation to enrollment, and the hours it saved
Six months in, 70+ of the 5,000+ students who left their details through Engage have enrolled at the institution.
The enrollment funnel
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34,800+Visitors who engaged with EngageStarting point
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5,000+Left a phone number or email14.5% of visitors
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70+Enrolled at the institution1.4% of leads
Engage replied to each conversation as it came in, so the recruitment team started every day with a list of students who had already asked to be contacted.
Figures cover March 19, 2026 to September 16, 2026 (point-in-time) and use the same whole-period window throughout. Enrollments are as reported by the institution for students who were first captured as Engage leads. Revenue is an estimate based on CAD 15,000 average tuition per enrolled student; staff time assumes 3 minutes per reply and a 37.5-hour week. Domestic and international shares reflect visitor location (all-time), not residency status. April 2026 (32,225 conversations) is a volume spike under review with the product team; steady-state full months (May to August) averaged 4,524 conversations per month. March and September are partial months. Intent-level denominator to be confirmed.
What's next
Connecting Engage to the CRM
Two integrations come next. CRM sync will drop Engage's leads, with intent signals attached, directly into the institution's system of record. The team is also building containment measurement, which tracks how many questions Engage settles without any staff involvement.
Once leads land directly in the CRM, the institution can follow each one through to an outcome and see the return for every intake as it comes in.
Conclusion
None of this asked students to change how they behave. They were already on the website with questions.
The difference is that answers now come back at any hour. Over six months that added up to 57,500+ conversations from 170 countries, 5,000+ students who asked to be contacted, and 70+ who enrolled, worth an estimated CAD 1M+ in tuition.
Want to see what Engage would do on your website?
See what Capio Engage would do for your recruitment funnel.
