Oxford Royale Academy runs premium summer courses at Oxford, Cambridge, London, Yale, and New York — drawing students from 176 countries. Their challenge: converting website leads within five minutes, around the clock, across every time zone. Last year, that took four temporary staff working shifts. This year, one CloudTalk AI Voice Agent does it instead — calling leads out of hours, running daytime campaigns, and switching languages on the fly.
About Oxford Royale Academy
Oxford Royale Academy is a premium education company offering two-week summer courses for students aged 12 to 18. Students attend programs at five locations — Oxford, Cambridge, London, Yale, and New York — choosing from over 56 academic subjects. At last count, the student body spans 176 countries.
The business is deeply seasonal. Oxford Royale runs a permanent team of around 30 staff, operating as a sales and marketing company for 46 weeks of the year. Then, for six weeks in the summer, it transforms into a delivery organisation of roughly 400 people.
Problem
Leads Go Cold in Hours — and Competitors Don’t Wait
Oxford Royale’s growth depends on speed. When a prospective student or parent visits the website and shows interest, the goal is a call within five minutes. That window is the difference between an enrollment and a lost lead.
The principle we have is we call someone within five minutes of them becoming a lead, and that tends to generate much better conversion from a lead to an enrollment.
The problem is geography. Oxford Royale’s leads come from all over the world — families in China, Spain, France, the Gulf — and they don’t submit forms during UK business hours. When the team went home, the leads went cold. By the next morning, those prospects had often moved on.
We would call them the next day. By which time they’d become cold leads — and they were going to our competitors probably.
A Seasonal Problem That Couldn’t Scale on Headcount Alone
The existing solution was expensive and fragile. Each summer, Oxford Royale recruited four temporary staff specifically to call hot leads — working in shifts to cover different time zones, including 24-hour coverage at peak.
It worked. But it created a staffing dependency that had to be rebuilt from scratch every year. And even with shift coverage, some international leads fell into timing gaps where no human agent could realistically reach them.
Evaluation
Skeptical, Then Surprised
Wayne had seen AI voice tools talked about before. He wasn’t convinced — until he experienced one himself.
I was skeptical because you think, ‘Yeah, but how am I gonna know that’s a voice agent?’ And then I got a call after a webinar and you go, ‘Okay. I know it’s an agent, but that’s pretty convincing.’
The quality shifted his thinking. But before committing, he had a board to convince. The concern wasn’t operational — it was brand. Oxford Royale is a premium product. Would an AI voice agent dilute that?
The answer was a controlled trial: out-of-hours only, fully transparent, small enough to monitor closely.
Putting It to the Test
The trial ran for a couple of weeks across roughly 100 calls. Wayne listened to every recording himself. The agent introduced itself as a voice agent, explained why it was calling, and offered to send a HubSpot meeting link via SMS if the lead wanted to speak with an admissions advisor.
The leads who engaged, engaged properly — without any apparent friction from speaking to an AI.
One moment stood out.
I remember one call — I think it was a Chinese family — and I could hear the mother in the background saying, ‘Wow, that’s an AI. That’s really cool.’ At that point, I thought, maybe I should get the AI to talk Mandarin.
He did.
Solution
One Agent, Every Time Zone, Any Language
Oxford Royale’s voice agent now handles lead response across the full day — not just out of hours. When a lead comes in via HubSpot, the agent calls within minutes, introduces itself transparently, qualifies interest, and sends an SMS with a booking link for a human admissions call.
The agent started in English. After the trial, Wayne extended it to Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin — configuring it to detect the language a lead answers in and switch automatically.
It listens to how they answer. If they answer with a particular phrase, it talks in that language. That’s been very impressive.
Prompt refinements followed. The agent’s early version was too eager — chasing leads to confirm they’d received the link and booked a slot. Wayne pulled it back.
They need time to book the meeting. Just say, ‘If you have a problem, let me know, I can help. Otherwise, thank you for your time.’ So we made that a better experience for them.
From After-Hours Coverage to Always-On Campaigns
What started as a gap-filler has become a core outbound tool. When the marketing team identifies an underperforming course and creates a targeted HubSpot list, the voice agent calls the segment directly — during business hours, in the relevant language, with a clear call to action.
The logic is the same as the five-minute rule: reach people while they’re thinking about you.
Results
Four Staff Replaced. Every Lead Covered.
The most direct result is headcount. Last summer, Oxford Royale employed four temporary staff in rotating shifts to call hot leads around the clock. This year, the voice agent does all of it.
Last year, we recruited four people to just call hot leads. This year, we haven’t recruited any of those four. The voice agent is doing all that.
Beyond cost, the coverage is better. The agent reaches leads at the moment of intent — no shift gaps, no time zone misses, no days where no calls go out because a team member is unavailable.
The trial also validated something Wayne already believed: speed to lead matters more than almost anything else. A customer wrote in after enrolling to say exactly why they’d chosen Oxford Royale over the competition.
I looked at the email communications and the customer had written, ‘You called me first, so I enrolled with you.’ That was a message to us that calling them within five minutes is effective.
Wayne is already planning the next use case: automating balance-due reminders for enrolled students who haven’t paid 90 days before their course starts — a repetitive, high-volume task currently handled by the customer service team.
Takeaway
Oxford Royale didn’t automate their calls to save time. They did it to move faster than their competitors — and to do it consistently, regardless of the season, the hour, or the language on the other end of the line.
I think I would confidently say that our conversion rates improve because of the voice agent. We just call them out of hours, we call them through the day. If the quicker we get to them, the more chance we have of converting them.
