Introducing CampusESP’s Family AI Assistant: Always-On Support for Today’s Families
Families don’t just have questions from 9 to 5. They need support on weekends. During move-in. Filling out forms late at night. When those questions go unanswered, colleges miss opportunities to build trust, reduce friction, and better support families.
That’s why we’re excited to officially introduce our ESP Sense™ Family AI Assistant, a new engagement layer that delivers instant, personalized support while offering deeper insight into what families need most.
It helps institutions:
Deliver real-time, 24/7 support during nights, weekends, and high-volume periods
Reduce calls volume and scale support, freeing staff for high-touch interactions
Improve engagement strategy with a clearer window to family concerns
Identify early signals of enrollment, fundraising opportunity, or student risks
Go live quickly with AI pre-trained on the CampusESP portal
Unlike generic chatbots or student-focused AI platforms, our Family AI Assistant was designed specifically for the front lines of college family engagement.
Built for the unique needs of college families
Over the last four months, we’ve beta tested the Family AI Assistant with 25 colleges and universities, partnering with a variety of institutions such as Kennesaw State University, Barry University, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and University of Portland to fine-tune the experience based on direct user feedback. We’re now ready to bring our ESP Sense™ Family AI Assistant to every CampusESP partner!
A sample of CampusESP’s Family AI Assistant beta testers
The early results proved a high level of family utilization and need:
Over 9,000 interactions from 3,000 families (fairly split between 59% current families and 41% prospective families) 📈
85% of families say an AI Assistant would be valuable. In fact, it’s now the #1 family preference to get quick information — even higher than email, phone, and web! 🥇
The top topics of conversation had to do with upcoming events, housing, class registration, and financial aid 💰
Parents rate 4/5 satisfaction score on AI responses received ⭐
What are your preferred ways to get a quick answer?
Responses from a 2026 CampusESP survey to college families on AI sentiments
From the administrator lens, Emese Frank, the Senior Coordinator for Parent & Family Engagement at Boise State University shared, “Once the Family AI Assistant launched, we saw immediate engagement from families. Families are asking more questions — and different questions — than we typically receive in our inbox. It provides a clearer window into the family experience, ultimately helping us serve our families more effectively.”
How CampusESP’s Family AI Assistant works
Our ESP Sense™ Family AI Assistant is built for the front lines. It’s designed for the people doing the work (not IT). No long setup. No complex configuration. It works with the systems you already have.
Persona-aware support
Parents don’t ask the same questions as students. Prospective families don’t need the same answers as current families. That’s why our AI Assistant adapts and tailors responses based on based on audience: Parent of a current student, parent of a prospective student, student user, or admin user.
Pre-trained on all CampusESP portal content
Don’t build an AI knowledge base from scratch! Our AI Assistant instantly indexes all CampusESP portal content (events, posts, emails, etc.), approved institutional websites, and existing portal metadata. That means your AI Assistant comes pre-trained and ready to go with the content you already trust.
Custom school-specific training
Want to reinforce institutional policies? Need to tweak a specific piece of guidance? Institutions can add custom instructions and additional training sources to fine-tune prompts with school-specific styles.
Powered by the CampusESP Knowledge Base
The AI Assistant doesn’t only know your institution — it’s also trained on more than 100 CampusESP guides containing CampuESP product knowledge, higher education industry knowledge, and family engagement best practices. Your school-specific resources are supplemented with even more industry context.
Actionable analytics
Built-in analytics help you measure that it’s working, with reports for utilization by persona, satisfaction scores, top conversation topics and support opportunities, and conversation histories.
Chris Brundidge, the Director of the Office of Student Enrollment Communications at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said it best: “UWM saw immediate adoption once the AI Assistant was turned on. The ability to see all the topics parents want to know about is incredibly insightful. Whether this is your first time leveraging an AI Assistant or your fifth, CampusESP developed their AI in a way that truly meets users where they are.”
Getting started is easy!
The ESP Sense™ Family AI Assistant is now available for all customers to preview and test directly inside their CampusESP platform. To learn a bit more about how CampusESP’s AI Assistant works, you can also:
Read our QuickStart Guide
Watch an On-Demand Demo
Register for a live CampusESP Academy session (dates in June 2026)