KovsieChat — University of the Free State's AI Chatbot Scales Student Support in Bloemfontein

The University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein, South Africa, first built a simple rules-based chatbot, Kovsie2Bot, during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep prospective and current students informed when in-person channels were disrupted. It was later rebranded KovsieChat and, in May 2024, upgraded to a generative-AI assistant built on the EduBot platform (developed by SIS Global and its AI division, Verge AI) running on Microsoft Azure OpenAI's GPT-4.

KovsieChat operates 24/7 and answers questions on admission requirements, course and faculty information, entry scores, registration steps, scholarships and campus life. It supports South Africa's official languages plus additional languages, and includes voice-note input to widen access for students with limited typing literacy or connectivity.

According to the deploying vendor's own case study, the GPT-4 upgrade helped the bot process more than 5 million messages from over 77,300 users, doubling user reach while cutting support-ticket volume by 71% and live-chat requests by 83% during peak registration periods. Independent local coverage (a sponsored feature on regional broadcaster OFM) confirms the tool's role and origin story but does not itself publish usage statistics.

Caveat: the quantitative results (message volume, user counts, percentage reductions) are self-reported by the commercial vendor that built and sells the platform, and have not been independently audited or confirmed by a third party. They are treated here as descriptive, vendor-reported evidence rather than verified impact data.

Read the full analysis: https://www.ofm.co.za/article/centralsa/332124/kovsiechat-revolutionising-student-engagement