More than a Chatbot for SHU
Enhancing the Student Experience with Galvia’s AI-Powered Support
Sheffield Hallam University, a leading higher education institution with approximately 28,000 students across two campuses, sought to digitally transform its student support services. With thousands of inquiries handled annually by Hallam Help, Hallam’s front-line support services, the university needed an efficient, scalable solution to improve accessibility and responsiveness.
To address these challenges, Sheffield Hallam partnered with Galvia to introduce an AI-powered digital assistant within the Hallam Helper student application. The goal was to enhance support services, streamline inquiry management, and provide students with instant, round-the-clock assistance.
The Challenge
Before implementing Galvia, Sheffield Hallam’s existing support framework relied heavily on human query resolution and web-based self-service resources. However, these resources presented challenges in accessibility, usage, and maintenance, leading to high inquiry volumes and additional pressure on service staff. The university needed a solution that could provide immediate, accurate, and easily accessible support for general queries while integrating seamlessly with existing systems to ensure a student could be easily connected with a human when needed. The Big Question was: How can AI enhance support without losing the human touch?
The Solution
A Seamless AI Integration for Scalable Student Support
Galvia’s AI-powered assistant was deployed onto the student application, ensuring accessibility across key university platforms. The AI was trained using access to the university’s student-facing knowledge base and student web content.
To ensure that students could access support at any time, the university introduced Hallam Helper, a 24/7 AI chatbot designed to provide instant, personalised assistance. Whether students needed help navigating campus facilities, understanding well-being resources, or finding university policies, the chatbot was always available, reducing response times and streamlining support. The introduction of Hallam Helper also complemented the university’s existing communication channels, ensuring that students could engage with support services in the ways that suited them best.
Beyond answering queries, Galvia provided Sheffield Hallam with an advanced data analytics dashboard, offering valuable insights into student needs. By analysing trends in student inquiries, the university is able to identify areas for improvement and proactively enhance service delivery. As a next step the University plans to utilise the innovative Digital Check-in tool to help staff gather real-time student feedback and facilitate early well-being interventions. By unifying these digital resources, Sheffield Hallam is able to create a truly integrated support system that is both responsive and adaptive to student needs.
Impact and Results
Since implementing Galvia’s AI-powered solution, Sheffield Hallam University has transformed student support, easing pressure on staff while improving accessibility. The AI assistant has achieved a 74% resolution rate, independently handling the majority of inquiries and generating 39,191 responses over a six-month time period.
With 40% of questions asked outside office hours, the AI ensures students get support whenever they need it. Of the 39,191 interactions, only 935 required escalation, proving its effectiveness in resolving queries in real-time.
As adoption grows, the AI assistant continues to enhance efficiency, ensuring students receive timely, personalised support — day or night — while allowing staff to focus on more complex needs.
Looking Ahead
Sheffield Hallam University plans to expand Galvia’s capabilities by integrating additional knowledge sources, to deliver even more tailored support to existing students and to look at how to support other audiences on campus. These enhancements will incorporate student-specific course information, enabling more precise and context-aware responses.
Through this collaboration, Sheffield Hallam University has positioned itself at the forefront of AI-driven student support, demonstrating a forward-thinking approach to enhancing the student experience.
“Galvia understood our desire to extend the reach of our student service teams, rather than just replace human interaction. Their structured approach and particular experience with well-being queries allowed us to deploy the solution with confidence. By unifying our data, we are now better placed to understand the evolving needs of our students, ensuring we can deliver the right support at the right time.”
– Dave Thornley, Head of Digital Architecture, Sheffield Hallam University
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