Enterprise Chat and SMS Communications Solution

The Vendor is required to provide a cloud-based Enterprise Chat and SMS Communications Solution.
- It provides educational access through online teaching and learning, individualized instruction, mentoring, and prior learning assessment.
- Responsible for:
• System configuration and deployment
• Integration with institutional systems
• Knowledge base configuration
• Accessibility validation
• Security compliance documentation
• Staff training
• System testing
• Ongoing maintenance and support
- Implement a secure, accessible, AI-enabled communication platform that:
• Provides accurate 24/7 student support
• Enables proactive and personalized outreach
• Reduces administrative workload
• Supports multiple student populations and departments
- The platform must support the following communication formats:
• Web-based chat
• Two-way SMS functionality as well as high-volume SMS campaign distribution, including outbound messaging, and inbound responses
• Vendors should note that our current enrollment is 16,000 annually and we currently send approximately 150 text campaigns to large subsets of this population.
• Live chat with staff
- The platform must provide role-based administrative access and views. Please note that agency anticipates approximately 15 to 20 staff members needing all access, approximately 35 to 45 staff members needing live chat access, approximately 8 to 10 staff members needing limited access, and an unknown number of student workers needing limited access to review responses.
- The platform should support escalation to a human agent from agency when the platform is unable to resolve an inquiry and should also allow users to explicitly request transfer to a human at any point during the interaction.
-The platform should provide conversational continuity across interfaces and channels, allowing users to continue conversations seamlessly as they move between platforms (e.g., website chatbot, student/staff portal chatbot, SMS, or live agent handoff) without loss of the conversation transcript.
- Vendors should note that our current monthly conversation volume is approximately 3,200 conversations. Our peak monthly volume is approximately 4,100 conversations.
- Vendors should be prepared that the anticipated peak concurrent user load can be anywhere between 400-500. And the average daily interaction volume is anticipated to be 300-400 per day – but could be higher in response to a mass text outreach.
- The platform should have a responsive design to accommodate users on all types of devices (e.g., desktop, tablet, and mobile devices).
- Platform should include workflow, including the ability to assign, route, and prioritize conversations based on topic/functional area
• Including a shared inbox or queue across departments and alert notifications
- The platform should be scalable.
In the 2025 Calendar year we had: 25,691 total chat conversations with a total of 60,584 total questions asked within those conversations. We are expecting a large increase with the new product as we will utilize it to replace some of the existing SMS campaigns in other systems and our enrollment growth was 8% last year.
- The platform should support fully independent SMS channels, where each channel operates separately and maintains its own distinct opt-in and opt-out functionality, such that a user’s consent status in one channel does not impact or transfer to any other channel.
- The platform should provide the ability to use insights from reports to improve content and outreach via AI technology. The reporting should include actionable AI-driven insights and automation, such as identifying trends, common inquiries, gaps in content, and opportunities for process improvement. The reporting should also include automated recommendations to optimize content, workflows, and user experience.
- The platform must integrate with Banner (SIS) via native Ethos APIs, REST APIs or direct integration.
- The platform must support Single Sign-On (SSO) via Azure AD/Entra ID SAML.