How INSEAD is transforming student engagement with AI

What if prospective students could describe their ambitions in plain language and instantly find the programme that's right for them? That was the challenge INSEAD set out to solve, while giving their recruitment teams more time to focus on meaningful conversations rather than routine enquiries.

To turn ambition into impact quickly, we worked side by side with INSEAD and Salesforce to pioneer one of the first applications of Salesforce Agentforce following its global launch. The focus was to put agentic and generative AI to work in two targeted pilots and prove measurable value, fast.

Four weeks later, INSEAD’s first new GenAI-powered agent was live. It is achieving 75–80% accuracy, helping prospective students ask natural questions such as "I’m looking for a programme in leadership communication or entrepreneurship" and receiving tailored guidance in seconds rather than searching through multiple brochures and web pages.

In parallel, AI-enabled sales support is improving productivity, resolving more than a third of enquiries without escalation to a human team, freeing teams to focus on more complex, value-adding interactions. It has also generated new ‘Voice of Customer’ insights, highlighting unmet demand and emerging needs, helping INSEAD refine prospective student journeys and strengthen future engagement.

INSEAD has trailblazing in its DNA. Serving a global business audience across campuses in France, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and San Francisco, it has a front-row view of how expectations, and ways of working, are changing fast.

Customers today want answers quickly. They want digital experiences that feel easy, relevant, and personal. And they don’t want to dig through pages of programme information just to answer simple questions. Previously, prospective students often had to navigate multiple brochures, PDFs and programme pages before finding the information they needed. Today, many of those same questions can be answered in minutes through an AI-powered experience.

At the same time, internal recruitment teams face growing pressure. As programme offerings grow, so do enquiry volumes, follow-ups, and administrative effort—including deciding what to prioritise and how.

Then came Dreamforce (Salesforce's flagship annual conference). As Salesforce unveiled Agentforce (in 2024) to the world, INSEAD saw an opportunity few organisations had yet considered: could agentic AI transform the way prospective students discover, compare and choose programmes? Rather than waiting for the technology to mature, INSEAD chose to move first. And to do it in a way that was grounded in real value from day one.

We mobilised quickly, bringing together a global, cross-functional PwC team spanning Singapore, France, Australia, and the US, and partnered with Salesforce as part of the PwC-Salesforce Alliance.

Rather than starting with technology, the team started with outcomes. Together, PwC, Salesforce and INSEAD identified two high-impact opportunities where AI could immediately improve both the student experience and internal productivity. Only then did the technical build begin.

Working side by side with INSEAD, we helped build the business case, defining the objectives, expected benefits, and success measures for each use case. From there, we prioritised the right opportunities, defined realistic MVPs and clear KPIs, and iteratively delivered the technical build. That close collaboration enabled rapid progress, from concept to live deployment in a matter of weeks.

Key features:

• A GenAI-powered agent helping prospective students find relevant programme information faster and easier, powered by Salesforce Einstein AI and deployed through Salesforce Agentforce and Data Cloud.
• The agent can search across unstructured programme content, including brochures and PDFs, so users can get relevant answers without manually reviewing multiple documents.
• It was embedded within INSEAD’s existing Salesforce-powered application portal already in use to accelerate speed to market and impact.
• Built-in guardrails and escalation pathways to ensure seamless handover to the ‘human in the loop’ support when needed.
• Testing to refine guardrails to prevent hallucinations and limit errors.
• AI-enabled sales support, via Salesforce Sales Cloud, to help teams prioritise, personalise, and convert opportunities more effectively.
• A scalable foundation to expand AI across more users and business processes over time.
  

And we didn’t just set things up and step back. We stayed closely involved throughout, coordinating architecture support, testing and delivery to keep everything moving smoothly.

INSEAD is demonstrating what AI-enabled education can look like in practice.

• 75–80% agent accuracy, with performance continuing to improve as the model evolves.
• 38% case deflection rate (approximately), with more than a third of enquiries resolving without escalation to a human team, well above the original 20% target.
• 16% cases routing to internal teams (approximately) which suggests the guardrail and ‘human in the loop’ set-up is performing.
• Response times reducing from hours or days to minutes, helping participants get timely, relevant answers whenever needed without relying on email follow-ups.
• Increasing productivity for internal sales teams, with 5–10 minutes saved per AI-handled, FAQ-driven top-of-funnel enquiry, freeing them to prioritise more complex, value-adding interactions.
• Enabling a scalable path to growth for INSEAD through AI-powered programme guidance and recommendations, helping to expand reach and programme offerings more efficiently.
• AI-generated ‘Voice of Customer’ insights are creating new opportunities to better understand unmet demand, friction points and emerging customer needs across segments.

What’s next for INSEAD? It's scaling its efforts, with a strong eye on business outcomes. The goal is to enable end-to-end, AI-driven workflows that move beyond standalone use cases and into fully connected operations. This is INSEAD’s trailblazing approach in action.