Demo classes booked while your faculty teaches

Coaching centres in Kota, Delhi's Mukherjee Nagar, Pune or Hyderabad's Ameerpet share a schedule problem. Parents and students research in the evening, after school, office and dinner. That is exactly when your faculty are teaching and your counsellor has gone home. A WhatsApp chatbot for coaching classes is not about replacing the counsellor. It is about making sure the parent who asks about the Class 10 Science batch at 9:40pm gets a real answer before they message the institute next door.

A typical evening queue looks like this:

• "NEET repeater batch ka fees kitna hai? Hostel hai?"
• "Is there a weekend batch for Class 11 maths?"
• "Demo class kab hai? Free hai?"
• "Can we pay in instalments?"
• "My daughter is in ICSE, not CBSE. Will the syllabus match?"

Every one of these can be answered from information you already have. The last step, booking a demo class on WhatsApp, is where enquiries turn into admissions, and it is the step most institutes lose because nobody replies until the next afternoon.

Parent: "Hello sir, Class 9 foundation ke liye demo hai kya? Bachi CBSE me hai"
AI: "Namaste! Yes, Class 9 CBSE Foundation (Maths + Science) has a free demo every Sunday at 10am, 90 minutes, at our Lajpat Nagar centre. This Sunday has 6 seats left. Shall I book one? Please share the student's name."
Parent: "Riya Kapoor. Sunday ok"
AI: "Booked: Riya Kapoor, Class 9 Foundation demo, Sunday 19 October, 10am. Please arrive 10 minutes early and bring a notebook. Fees for the full year are ₹42,000, payable in 3 instalments, if you'd like the details now."

Note what happened: the AI answered in the parent's mix of Hindi and English, named the date and weekday, offered a seat count only because the institute tracks demo capacity in its calendar, and mentioned fees without pushing. The demo seat now sits in Google Calendar, so your front desk knows exactly who is coming.

Behind the scenes, each demo is a calendar event with a fixed number of seats. You can learn how capacity, durations and buffers work on the appointment booking page.

The quality of replies depends on what you feed in. Most institutes already have a brochure PDF or a fee sheet. Turn it into clear entries:

1. Courses table: course name, class, board, subjects, mode (online/offline), batch days and times.
2. Fees: total, instalment plan, registration fee, what is refundable, GST if you charge it.
3. Demo policy: free or paid, how often, how many seats, what to bring.
4. Admissions: documents, last date, scholarship test dates.
5. Centres: addresses with landmarks, timings, contact for each branch.
6. Tone: "sir/ma'am", Hindi courtesies, or plain English for a premium IB tutoring studio.

Students and parents often send a photo of a fee receipt, a report card or a schedule screenshot from a WhatsApp group. NextReply reads photos and voice notes as part of the chat, and it can tell a parent which batch fits based on the class and board on a report card. Anything that needs judgement, such as a fee waiver request, goes to staff.

Coaching enquiries are seasonal, and the peaks are predictable. Board results in May bring a wave of Class 11 and repeater enquiries. The weeks after JEE and NEET results bring droppers looking for a second attempt. School reopening in June and the post-Diwali stretch bring foundation-batch parents. During these windows a single-branch institute can receive several hundred WhatsApp messages a week, most of them the same eight questions.

Three habits help institutes get through the rush:

• Update the knowledge base before the season, not during it. New batch dates, revised fees and scholarship test dates should be in place the week results come out.
• Add extra demo slots in the calendar. The AI can only book seats that exist. If Sunday demos fill by Wednesday, open a Saturday evening demo.
• Watch the handoff queue daily. Scholarship and discount questions spike in season. A counsellor clearing them each morning keeps parents from drifting to the next institute.

A simple way to judge whether automation is working: compare demo bookings and demo attendance month on month, and check how many enquiries got their first reply within five minutes. Before automation, most institutes answer evening enquiries the next afternoon. After it, the first answer arrives in seconds, at any hour.

NextReply plans are priced in US dollars, the same in every country: Starter $29, Pro $59 and Business $99 a month, and each comes with a 7-day free trial. At checkout, your card or bank may show an estimate in rupees, and local taxes may apply. Starter covers up to 500 bookings a month, which is plenty for most single-branch institutes even if every demo seat is booked through the AI. Multi-branch institutes that want full conversation history, or that send every demo booking to a CRM by webhook, look at Pro or Business. See the pricing page for everything included.

Setup takes an afternoon: connect your WhatsApp number with Coexistence so your counsellor keeps the app, add courses and fees, connect the demo calendar and test with last month's real enquiries. The how it works page walks through it. If most of your enquiries arrive after class hours, start with after-hours replies only. For India-specific pricing context and language examples, visit the NextReply India page, or go back to the home page for the full product.