Every year, the ASU Experience Center takes on over one million contacts from students, parents, and more. A group of 130 specialists staff the Experience Center 24/7, 365 days a year to ensure the Sun Devil community has the support it needs.
And now, AI-focused specialists are hoping to make the lives of their co-workers, and the lives of community members easier, with AI-driven solutions.
April Rigler, interim assistant director for the Experience Center, said that the integration of Copilot-NiCE — a platform for various customer-service-focused AI tools — into specialist interactions is prioritizing positive experiences between specialists and community members.
The NiCE platform launched within the Experience Center on July 29, starting with 10 Experience Center Finance specialists. Today, the finance team — which has nearly dedicated specialists — has moved onto the new AI tools.
“We’re focused on helping the ASU community,” Rigler said. “I am talking about students, faculty, staff, parents and beyond. Back-to-school is a big time as new students are starting their educational journey. We are here to help guide that journey.”
The rush period for fall 2025 started on July 5, and will end on September 1. The Experience Center will typically receive about 280,000 contacts during this time alone.
Previously, specialists had to manually document every interaction, which consumed valuable time that could have been spent helping others. In many cases, they also had to pause and search for knowledge articles on their own throughout their calls.
This new AI toolset streamlines support by automatically summarizing calls and logging them into their ticketing system, giving other teams instant access to the information they need to assist students quickly and effectively. Rather than spending time searching for resources, specialists now receive relevant knowledge surfaced in real time as the customer speaks — empowering specialists with immediate answers to provide faster, more accurate support.
Today, documentation is automated and knowledge retrieval is faster. Specialists can now dedicate their attention to managing time effectively, gathering accurate data, and delivering high-quality support with greater efficiency.
“NiCE is removing the barrier of prompting,” Rigler said. “The AI provides proactive responses for specialists, removing the prompting and providing real-time knowledge during an interaction.”
Nico Martinez, chatbot specialist within Experience Center, has worked in his role for over a year. Before, he was an IT specialist for the Experience Center, giving him unique insights into the needs of specialists to inform AI development. Martinez also graduated from the Master of Science in Information Systems Management program, with an emphasis in AI, over the summer.
Currently, Martinez develops the format and automation of the knowledge base integration into the NiCE AI tools used on his team.
Martinez reported approximately 4,000 articles in the AI knowledge base, and it’s going to keep growing to make the tools more effective for specialists.
“The question is, how can we build these tools in the most efficient way to achieve that mission for us — improving both the staff and student experience,” Martinez said.
Working closely with Knowledge Manager Georgia Butkiewicz, Martinez is hoping the developed knowledge base will contribute to more efficient AI tools on the NiCE platform. His goals are to decrease the time a specialist spends looking up information for students, staff, and faculty – therefore providing a more positive experience for everyone involved in the interaction.
“You really need good, clean knowledge to realize the value of the AI,” Rigler said. “If you don’t have good and clean knowledge, you’re not going to get the benefit of the tool that you’re implementing.”
While the NiCE AI tools are still undergoing custom instructions and framework development, feedback on fine-tuning the experience have been positive overall.
After a year of navigation, initiative, and development, the Experience Center has made leaps and bounds in enhancing the experiences of callers, emailers, and chat users who rely on Experience Center services, and the front-line specialists who provide those services, by scaling cutting-edge AI tools.
