TBS Education Crushes Admissions Goals with WhatsApp

TBS Education, formerly known as Toulouse Business School, offers internationally recognised Bachelor, Master in Management, MSc, and Summer School programs to train future business leaders. 

The Admissions team is the powerhouse behind the school’s outstanding reputation as a top business school. The team handles over 10,000 enquiries every year from students all over the world, and WhatsApp is almost always students’ preferred channel for admissions support. 

Fast and personal communication makes all the difference at TBS Education: prospective students compare between 5 to 10 schools. These prospective students need answers to their questions, and expect them almost instantly.

Polser also connects directly to TBS’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM, so every WhatsApp conversation lands where the team already works.

The problem

WhatsApp is the channel of choice for today’s students. Emails go unread, but WhatsApp messages get opened, answered, and acted on–with engagement rates upwards of 80%.

Students expect institutions to meet them on the platforms they find most convenient, reflecting a broader shift in service-driven education. TBS Education knew that prioritising WhatsApp was the key to faster responses, stronger connections and ensuring no prospective student was left waiting or lost in the process.

Manual Processes and Missed Opportunities

The Admissions team was struggling to manually keep up with over 200 WhatsApp enquiries each week, soaring to thousands during admissions season. Managing these conversations required hours of tedious copy-pasting between platforms, recording student interactions in their CRM (Microsoft Dynamics), and was prone to error. 

The delays in response times meant missed opportunities, giving competitors a chance to engage with prospective students before TBS Education could establish a connection.

Personalisation was also limited. With high volumes of inquiries, TBS Education often resorted to canned responses, which lacked a human touch, something that is important to their student experience and identity. Lead qualification suffered, as the Admissions team couldn’t dedicate enough time to truly understand the students’ needs and guide them effectively through the admissions process.

Deadlines & Events

Without bulk messaging on WhatsApp, TBS Education had to send invites for events one by one, draining time and energy. Stuck in manual tasks, they had little room to focus on prioritising top leads and engaging with the most promising prospects. Their outreach efforts were limited, and valuable opportunities were slipping away.

Service-oriented Admissions

“Every student’s journey from enquiry to enrolment is unique. The key to success is to listen, whether through WhatsApp, phone calls, or video calls. And then, tailor responses based on what matters most to them,” explains Jaime Garcia. 

“We needed a solution that would let us do this efficiently, and at scale, on WhatsApp, without ever losing the personal touch.”
Jaime García - Development & Admissions Manager at TBS Education

The solution

TBS Education has relied on Polser for over a year and is very pleased with the outcomes.

• More Applicants: The admission team can now connect with four or five students in the time it used to take to engage with just one.

• Faster, Personal Responses: No more endless copy-pasting. Smart Responses and Instant Answers make messaging quick and natural, leading to stronger connections and more conversions.

• Automation That Feels Human: What once took hours now happens in minutes, giving TBS Education’s team more time to focus on real conversations and meaningful relationships.

• Qualified Applicants: With more time to understand students’ needs, the admissions process can focus on guiding the right candidates forward, ensuring a better fit for everyone.

• Higher Prospect Engagement: Broadcasts make it possible to connect with 1,000 students in just two minutes, transforming a task that once took hours into a smooth and efficient process.

Connected to Microsoft Dynamics: one source of truth

WhatsApp only scales if the CRM keeps up. TBS runs admissions on Microsoft Dynamics, so they connected Polser to it through Polser’s API and webhooks and Microsoft Power Automate. There’s no custom middleware, and TBS’s IT team owns every flow.

What changed for the Admissions team:

• No more copy-pasting. Every WhatsApp message, inbound and outbound, is logged on the prospect’s record in Dynamics automatically, including which advisor sent it.

• New leads arrive complete. When an unknown number writes in, Polser checks Dynamics. If there’s no match, a WhatsApp form asks for name, email, country, program and start date, and the lead is created in the CRM ready to work.

• Campaigns built on CRM data. Leads from every other source sync from Dynamics into Polser, labeled by program and stage. The team sends segmented broadcasts without building lists by hand.

• Compliance in both directions. A “Stop promotions” tap on WhatsApp updates Dynamics, and an unsubscribe in the CRM stops marketing messages in Polser. GDPR deletion requests sync the same way.

• One click from record to chat. Advisors open the live WhatsApp conversation straight from the prospect’s record in Dynamics.

• Ready to scale across teams. Each recruitment team (Barcelona, Toulouse, and more coming) has its own workspace and flows.

The result: advisors spend their time talking to students instead of updating records, and leadership sees every WhatsApp interaction in the CRM.