Best sales month in 20 years within 30 days of launch

All-time high SMS reply rates

30 second response time

~10,000 leads per month handled at scale

Expanding into post-enrolment support

OVERVIEW

The Career Academy is an online provider of short courses and qualifications, serving learners across Australia and New Zealand. CEO Daniel Hunt and Team Leader Diamond King are responsible for managing close to 10,000 student inquiries every month, across a team of sales advisors handling outbound contact, course guidance, and enrolment support.

TCA was Enrola’s very first customer to go live. Daniel saw an early LinkedIn post, called the same day, and challenged the team to be ready within two weeks. That origin story has shaped a partnership built on direct feedback, continuous optimisation, and results that have only improved over time.

CHALLENGES

Volume That Outpaced the Team

With close to 10,000 inquiries arriving every month, TCA’s biggest challenge was speed. By the time an advisor worked through the queue and reached a lead, the student had already moved on. At that volume, playing catch-up is not a staffing problem. It is a structural one. No manual process can keep pace with demand at that scale consistently.

Manual Outreach Across Every Channel

Before Enrola, every call, every email, and every SMS was handled by hand. Tracking responses one by one meant leads were inevitably slipping through, not because the team was not working hard, but because the volume made it impossible to follow up on everything at the right time. The effort was there. The infrastructure to match it was not.

Missed Calls, Missed Moments

When a student called in and the advisor they needed was busy, a callback had to be scheduled. By the time that call happened, the student had moved on, lost interest, or signed up elsewhere. In a market where students are comparing multiple providers, the window to convert is narrow. Timing is everything, and missed timing is a missed enrolment.

SOLUTIONS

Every Lead Gets the Same First Contact

A student submits an inquiry. Within 30 seconds, they have a response from TCA, before any advisor has opened their inbox. Enrola’s AI agent reaches out to every lead instantly, regardless of when the inquiry comes in, what day it is, or how full the team’s call schedule is. No manual effort, no queue, no missed window.

Warm Leads, Ready Advisors

Enrola engages the student, answers their questions, and works toward booking a call. When an advisor reads the transcript the next morning, they already know who they are calling, what the student is interested in, and what concerns came up in the conversation. The student already knows TCA. The advisor can skip the introduction and go straight to goals. That shift alone has changed the quality of every human conversation downstream.

The Agent Qualifies, the Advisor Closes

Pricing, eligibility specifics, and enrolment logistics go to the human advisor. Enrola’s role is to build the student’s confidence and establish the relationship before anyone picks up the phone. By the time the call happens, the student is warm, informed, and ready to make a decision. The sales team, initially sceptical, now rates Enrola leads as among the best they work with.

“Sales skyrocketed. We had the best sales month ever, the month after we introduced Enrola.”

— Daniel Hunt, CEO, The Career Academy

RESULTS

Best Sales Month in Nearly 20 Years

October 2023, the month immediately after TCA went live with Enrola, was the biggest sales month in the company’s history. Daniel is clear that Enrola was a large contributor. The results have held since, and sales conversion rates across the business have been the strongest they have been in close to two decades of operation.

All-Time High Reply Rates

New leads responded to TCA’s outreach at rates the team had never seen before through any SMS channel. The combination of instant contact, a conversational tone, and responses that actually answered student questions produced engagement levels that surpassed every previous benchmark. The conversion rate from those replies was, in Daniel’s words, huge and quite surprising.

A Sales Team That Now Loves It

When Enrola was first introduced, the sales team pushed back. They were apprehensive about what it meant for their roles. Daniel and Diamond brought them along deliberately, sharing transcripts, taking feedback on messaging, and showing them how the platform was making their conversations better, not replacing them. Today the team actively engages with Diamond on how to improve the agent’s messages and treat Enrola as part of the recruitment function.

Expanding Beyond Lead Outreach

Having proven the model in sales, TCA is now bringing Enrola into post-enrolment support. Welcome call bookings are the first use case in development. Daniel and Diamond see the platform as infrastructure for the full student journey, not just the top of the funnel.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“The conversion rate was just huge and quite surprising. We had never had that strong a conversion rate with SMS. That is what students want. They want their questions answered there and then.”

— Daniel Hunt, CEO, The Career Academy

“Enrola is a fast and efficient way to build relationships with students. It introduces your company, builds their confidence, and gives them the momentum to take the next step.”

— Daniel Hunt, CEO, The Career Academy

“Seeing the conversations, understanding what the common questions are, what is holding students back, and which messages actually resonate has been a game changer for us.”

— Diamond King, Team Leader, The Career Academy

“I wish you could have built this 10 years ago.”

— Daniel Hunt, CEO, The Career Academy