A language school's chatbot: levels, start dates and refunds

Language schools get the same questions every week, from people who are close to buying. Which level am I? When does the next course start? How many people in a group? What if I have to stop halfway? Most of them write in the evening, after work, when the office is closed. An assistant that answers those questions well turns visitors into enrolments while the school is asleep.

The difficulty is that a school’s facts change every term. New start dates, new groups, new prices from January. An assistant that learned the website in June will happily quote June’s timetable in October.

What students ask

Question	Where the answer lives	How often it changes
“What level am I? Is there a test?”	Levels page, placement test	Rarely
“When does the next course start?”	Course schedule	Every term
“Do you have evening or weekend groups?”	Course schedule	Every term
“How many students per group?”	Course pages	Rarely
“How much is it? Is there a discount for two courses?”	Price list	Yearly
“Are the books included?”	Price list or course pages	Yearly
“Can I join a course that already started?”	FAQ or terms	Rarely
“Can I get a refund if I stop?”	Terms and conditions	Rarely
“Do you prepare for [exam]?”	Exam preparation page	Yearly
“Is it online or in person?”	Course pages	Every term

Levels are usually described with the Common European Framework of Reference (A1 to C2), which helps: the assistant can explain them from a stable source.¹ The rest moves.

Where answers go wrong

Old schedules. The most common problem. A schedule page for the spring term stays online, the autumn one is added next to it, and the assistant reads both. “The next beginners’ course starts on 3 March” in October is not a small mistake: it’s a student who thinks they missed it.

Price per hour versus per course. Schools often show both. An assistant that quotes “€14” without “per hour” makes a 60-hour course look cheap.

Discounts. Early-bird, two-course, student, returning-student: each with its own conditions. An assistant asked “is there a discount?” tends to list all of them as if they combine.

Refunds. Schools have a cancellation rule and, for courses booked online, consumer law gives a withdrawal period in many cases.² The two interact, and a too-generous summary (“you can cancel any time”) is a dispute waiting to happen.

A made-up example

A school runs evening courses in four languages. Its schedule page has two tables: “Spring 2026” and “Autumn 2026”. The spring table was never removed. A visitor asks on 1 October: “When does the next A2 Italian evening course start?”

The assistant finds the spring table first and answers: “The next A2 Italian evening course starts on 9 March, on Mondays and Wednesdays.” The autumn table says 13 October, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The visitor decides to wait until March, or books with another school.

The fix: take old schedules off the site, or at least out of the assistant’s sources. Put the term in each table’s heading with dates (“Autumn 2026, courses starting 6 to 20 October”), and give the assistant an instruction: if a question is about dates, answer only from the current term and give the schedule page.

A setup that keeps up with the terms

1. One current schedule. Old terms come off the site or out of the sources the day the new one goes up.
2. Prices with units. “€14 per hour, €840 for the 60-hour course” in one sentence.
3. Discounts with conditions, one per line, and whether they combine.
4. Refund rules in plain words, with the cancellation deadline and what happens after the first lesson.
5. A placement test link for every “what level am I” question, and a hand-over to staff for anything about an existing enrolment.
6. A term-start routine: when the new schedule goes up, ask the assistant ten date and price questions and compare with the page.

That last step is the one most schools skip, and it’s the one that catches the spring table still being read in October.

The same pattern, a fact that changes on a schedule and an old page that outlives it, shows up in gyms, coworking spaces and hotels. We wrote about hotels separately, and about the general reason it happens in how an AI assistant answers.

If you run a school and want the assistant set up from your own pages, or checked against them every term, Assistant Setup and Assistant Care cover both. Our education page has more examples.

Footnotes

1. Council of Europe, “Common European Framework of Reference for Languages”, coe.int. ↩

2. European Commission, Your Europe, “Guarantees and returns” (right of withdrawal), europa.eu/youreurope. ↩