Platform
AI reaches every student. Your team decides what they hear.
Retento checks in with every consenting student by SMS, works out what they need, answers what it can from your own services, and brings in a person when it matters. Nothing written by AI reaches a student until a member of your team approves it.
The support loop
Five steps, one conversation.
01
Engage
Check-ins by SMS from a named persona your institution chooses. The AI is always disclosed, and students opt in first.
02
Triage
Each reply is read for what the student needs, across five support areas. Anything about safety goes straight to a person.
03
Resource
Everyday questions are answered from your own approved help articles and services, in your voice.
04
Monitor
Risk builds from what students say and how they engage over time, never from grades, fees or attendance.
05
Escalate
When a student needs a person, the case goes to the right member of your team with the whole conversation.
Five support areas
Built around what students need, not what they owe.
Every conversation maps to one of five areas. Fees, attendance, enrolment and census dates stay with your student systems; if a student raises one, Retento points them to the right team.
Wellbeing and health
Stress, sleep, health and mental wellbeing.
Academic support
Workload, study skills and getting back on track.
Financial stress
Rent, food, work hours and emergency help.
Social connectedness
Belonging, isolation, clubs and peer support.
Careers and employment
Placements, part-time work and life after study.
The Retento Workspace
Everything a support team needs, nothing it doesn’t.
Interventions
One queue of students who need a person, sorted by urgency. AI drafts a reply; a case manager edits and approves it.
Alerts
Safety disclosures, students waiting past your response target, and escalations with no outcome yet, so nothing sits unseen.
Campaigns
Check-ins to a group of students, approved before sending. Quiet hours and a weekly limit protect students from too many messages.
Insights
Reach, response and outcomes by support area, plus the common themes students raise, shown only when enough students share them.
Team and settings
Roles, caseloads, handovers when someone leaves, your safety reply, support hours and connections to your systems.
Two ways to run it
Work cases in Retento, or in your own system.
Native mode
Your case managers work cases in the Retento Workspace: queue, approvals, notes and outcomes in one place. Suits teams without a case management system.
Connected mode
Escalations go into the support system you already run, such as ServiceNow, Salesforce, Dynamics, Zendesk or email, with a minimum set of fields and a return path for the outcome.
What you share
- Student contact listStudent ID, preferred name, mobile and year started, by file or SFTPCallistaTechnologyOneaXcelerate
- Your services and knowledgeSupport teams, opening hours and help articles your staff approve
- Your teamStaff roles, caseloads and support hours
Minimum fields only. Retento never reads grades, fees, attendance or enrolment records.
Engagement layer
- Consent checked before any message
- Triage across five support areas
- Risk from what students say, not their records
- Staff approve every AI-written reply
Australian-hosted
What flows back
- Consented SMS conversationsTwo-way, plain language, staff-approved
- Escalations to a personIn Retento's case queue, or your own support systemServiceNowSalesforceMicrosoft DynamicsZendeskEmail
- Aggregate reportingReach, response and outcomes by support area
Every escalation has a return path, so its outcome comes back and none is dropped.
Illustrative. Named systems are examples of what Australian institutions run; Retento works with any of them by file, webhook or email.
Scale
Reach everyone. Escalate only those who need a person.
- Whole cohort contacted12,000
Every student who has opted in receives a check-in each cycle.
- Respond and engage5,400
Two-way conversation in plain language, no portal or appointment.
- Resolved at first contact3,900
Answers, links and referrals handled inside the conversation.
- Escalated to a human610
Prioritised, with full context, to the right case manager.
Illustrative volumes for a 12,000-student institution, shown to explain the model.
What that means for your team
- 1 case manager
- Traditionally reaches a few hundred students a semester.
- Same team, whole cohort
- Retento contacts everyone, then hands over only the students who need a person.
- Human time redirected
- Effort moves from finding students at risk to supporting them.
Coverage scales with enrolment; case-manager load does not.
Reporting
Evidence your executive can take to council.
Retention insights
Semester 2 · all students · updated daily
Cohort contacted
98.2%
+4.1 pts vs last cycle
Response rate
45.1%
+6.3 pts
Resolved at first contact
72.4%
+2.8 pts
Median time to human
3h 12m
−41 min
Students supported per week
Concerns by support area
- Wellbeing and health28%
- Financial stress23%
- Academic support22%
- Social connectedness16%
- Careers and employment11%
Aggregate evidence of reach, response and outcomes, ready for the completion and equity reporting your executive already prepares. Small numbers are hidden to protect privacy.
Illustrative dashboard. Figures are examples, not client results.
See it with your own cohort in mind.
Book a 30-minute executive briefing, or explore the Workspace with synthetic students in our demo.