CUSTOMER STORY
970 Hours
Alabama A&M turns AI agent conversations into staff hours saved
Quick Summary:
System & Budget Savings: Alabama A&M University consolidated its student portal, legacy mobile app, intranet, and chatbot into Pathify, saving $25,000 annually—18% of its IT budget.
Time Reclaimed: Pathify’s AI Agent handled 23,272 conversations in a single year, achieving a 50% deflection rate and reclaiming 970 staff hours (over six months of work).
Scalable AI Impact: Moving from a simple chatbot to an enterprise AI Agent streamlined vendor management and established a scalable model to handle institutional growth without increasing staff workload.
Alabama A&M University already counted the savings. Over a year ago, Ryan Adkins, Cloud Application Administrator at AAMU, set out to solve a specific frustration: students wasting time hunting for basic information scattered across systems. “We didn’t want users wasting time hunting down information,” Adkins said in our earlier story on AAMU’s consolidation. “We wanted to deliver it in a personalized, timely way.” Working alongside AAMU’s CIO, Adkins evaluated Ellucian Experience and Unifyed before landing on Pathify, consolidating a legacy mobile app, student portal, employee intranet, and campus-wide chatbot into a single platform and saving the university $25,000 a year — 18% of its IT budget. A year into running Pathify’s AI Agent, Adkins found a second return sitting in the conversation logs: time.
From Chatbot to Enterprise Agent
AAMU folded its legacy campus-wide chatbot into Pathify as part of the same consolidation push. “Pathify’s AI Agent matched — and in some areas exceeded — the performance and functionality of our previous provider,” Adkins said. “Much like the Campus Experience Hub, the Agent enhances user experiences while seamlessly integrating into our Pathify ecosystem. It’s one less vendor to manage.” The savings tracked a shift AAMU watched unfold over the same year: the chatbot matured into an enterprise Agent solution completing real work, not just answering questions. AAMU expects the newer Agent’s time savings to compound further as it takes on more of the routine load.
A Second Return
AAMU’s AI Agent logged 23,272 conversations with students and prospects over the past year. Assuming a 50% deflection rate — a conversation the Agent resolved without a staff member stepping in — and five minutes saved per deflection, the math produced 970 working hours reclaimed, just over six working months of staff time no longer spent answering routine questions.
A Number that Keeps on Growing
Adkins does not expect 970 hours to stand as next year’s ceiling. As the Agent takes on more real work — completing tasks instead of pointing users toward an answer — the hour count grows without adding a single new conversation to the log.
Adkins runs every system decision through the same filter. “I don’t believe in paying extra for duplicated services or systems,” Adkins quipped. “Every time we consolidate costs, it’s a win for the end user’s experience and the team managing the tech stack.”
The same filter shaped how AAMU thinks about every tool on campus, the Agent included. “Everything lives in one place,” Adkins said. “It provides a simpler, more efficient tech stack, less vendor management and a smoother campus experience prioritizing what matters most — the student.”
What Comes Next
As Alabama A&M watched Pathify’s AI mature from a standard chatbot into an enterprise Agent solution, the technology transformed daily operations far beyond routine question-answering. Unifying reclaimed staff hours with earlier cost consolidation shifted the university’s long-term digital strategy. “When you tie the time savings together with the ROI we already get from the systems and costs we’ve consolidated using Pathify, it becomes even more of a no-brainer for our university,” Adkins said. By eliminating software redundancies while automating administrative tasks, AAMU created a scalable model — positioning campus operations to absorb future growth without increasing staff workload.
“When you tie the time savings together with the ROI we already get from the systems and costs we’ve consolidated using Pathify, it becomes even more of a no-brainer for our university.”
Ryan Adkins
Cloud Application Administrator
About Alabama A&M University
Alabama A&M University (AAMU) is a historic, community-focused institution located in Huntsville, Alabama. Reflecting on its heritage as a Historical Black College and University (HBCU) and a traditional 1890 land- grant institution, AAMU functions as a teaching, research and public service institution, including extension. Founded in 1875 by a former slave, Dr. William Hooper Council, AAMU is a dynamic and progressive institution with a strong commitment to academic excellence. The university provides more than 60 undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs and concentrations, a diverse international faculty, 50+ student organizations and an extensive alumni network, many of whom are change agents on the local, national and international stage.Learn more at aamu.edu.
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