Introduction

Southeastern University (Lakeland, Florida) manages more than 10,000 applications every fall, spanning traditional undergraduates, online learners, graduate, and doctoral students. For Sarah Clark, Chief Enrollment Officer, and Jereme Dempsey, Executive Director of Enrollment Data Management at SEU Central, keeping up with scale while meeting students’ rising expectations had become a serious challenge.

The Before: Costly Systems and Staff Overload

For years, SEU relied on Salesforce for CRM needs. While powerful, it required costly customizations and outside contractors to make even modest changes. Alongside Salesforce, the enrollment team juggled HubSpot for email campaigns and Mongoose for texting.

The result: tool sprawl, ballooning costs, and counselors stuck doing repetitive outreach instead of focusing on students.

The Buying Decision

The tipping point came when SEU learned that one of its network sites was successfully using Element451. The team was impressed by the all-in-one design and especially by the launch of Bolt Agents.

SEU had already piloted another vendor for late-cycle lead generation. But when Element451 introduced Bolt Agents at the 2025 Engage Summit, Clark and Dempsey saw the opportunity to bring AI teammates into their own CRM and communications platform.

"It was the right mix of innovation and consolidation. With Element451, we could retire multiple tools, cut costs, and immediately gain AI-powered capacity," said Clark.

The After: Bolt Agents in Action

SEU launched its first Bolt Agent in May, affectionately named “Cora” by the admissions team. Rather than tackling every audience at once, Jereme Dempsey started with a focused test: online leads for SEU’s adult and online program deliveries. This population was a perfect fit—large enough to matter, but manageable enough to pilot.

Jereme built Cora’s first Agent Job with six to seven carefully designed touch points, each triggered by the AI agent with the intent of nudging a prospect closer to applying. The goal was simple but critical: turn inquiries into applicants. The team also leaned into personalization.

Counselors and staff got to help choose the agent’s name, voice, and even a visual persona, which made adoption easier and ensured Cora felt like a true teammate rather than just another tool.

The results came quickly. Within the first month, Core had already converted online leads into applicants—something that would have been difficult for counselors managing pools of 1,000+ prospects each. Staff could even review her conversations, then step in for deeper one‑to‑one engagement, creating a smooth handoff between AI and human support.

The pilot surfaced valuable lessons. The original 1,000‑contact cap forced the team to prioritize carefully, which sharpened their strategy—but also highlighted the need for scale (they later expanded to 10,000 contacts). They saw firsthand that students were comfortable interacting with an AI teammate, especially one that responded instantly and sounded human. And the experience gave them confidence to imagine agents across the entire enrollment funnel: from visit invitations and transcript nudges to future applications in financial aid and registration.

Planned and active Bolt Agent use cases now include:

• Top-of-Funnel Conversion: Invite prospective students to events and visits.
• Mid-Funnel Nudges: Prompt students to submit transcripts, recommendations, and other checklist items.
• Application Review & Fraud Detection: Automatically flag incomplete or fraudulent applications.
• Transcript Evaluation (future): Agents that can instantly review and flag transcripts for counselor approval.
• Financial Aid and Registration (future): Streamlining processes where counselors are currently stretched thin.

ROI: Tangible Results, Human Impact

In the very first months of deployment, SEU’s AI agents saved 13,758 minutes of staff time, an efficiency gain equal to hundreds of hours. For a team balancing pools of more than 1,000 students each, that margin of time was transformational. Dempsey explained how these reclaimed hours let counselors step out of the weeds of repetitive outreach and instead invest energy where it mattered most: supporting high-need students and guiding them through complex enrollment steps.

When Bolt Chatbot Agent interactions were added into the mix, the savings soared to 38,863 minutes in just two months—nearly 1,000 workdays of effort returned to the institution. That scale of reclaimed time isn’t just an operational win; it redefines what’s possible for a lean admissions team during the most demanding part of the recruitment cycle.

The ROI extended beyond efficiency. Within the first month, SEU’s initial Bolt Lead Gen Agent had already converted prospects into applicants, proving that AI teammates weren’t just a support layer but an active driver of enrollment outcomes. The ability to maintain 24-hour outreach coverage meant that no inquiry languished in a counselor’s inbox. Instead, students were nurtured immediately, building momentum in the enrollment funnel that SEU had struggled to sustain manually.

The financial returns were equally compelling. By consolidating Salesforce customizations, HubSpot, and Mongoose into Element451, SEU eliminated the costs of multiple overlapping systems and the expense of outsourced technical support. This freed budget to be reinvested into strategic initiatives, while also simplifying the tech stack for staff.

In short, the ROI at SEU can be seen on multiple fronts: minutes saved, applications converted, staff morale boosted, and budgets optimized. But more than that, it gave the institution the one resource that is hardest to reclaim—time.

Looking Ahead

With Bolt Agents, SEU is planning to scale across every stage of the funnel—traditional undergrads, online adult learners, graduate students, and into its 200-site network.

The vision is clear: AI teammates embedded across admissions, financial aid, and student success, giving human counselors the freedom to focus on relationships.

"We are fully aware that agents can connect with students far beyond what we can do manually,” said Clark. “We’re more than excited to keep building our AI workforce.”

Southeastern University is proving what’s possible with an AI workforce in higher education.

Ready to see what Bolt Agents could do for your institution? Try an agent now.