Harambee Case Study

Harambee is a public platform that helps South African youth find employment, and after the pandemic it needed a non-face-to-face yet human-like onboarding approach.

To this end, it used AI21 Studio as its NLP engine to build the Coachmee chatbot, implementing natural conversation during the sign-up process that understands context and correctly addresses users by name. As a result, the sign-up completion conversion rate increased by 20%.

The key was not simple intent-based responses, but grasping context by detecting even users' broken English and language mixing. Through this, Harambee built trust and rapport, guiding young people toward their career goals.

AI21's generative capabilities were also later used in follow-up operations.

• lifehacks: Created about 60 guidance messages for post-sign-up check-in sessions
• reference letters: Generated customized reference letters for users who completed 20 check-ins
• summarization: Summarized individual strengths and goals based on initial conversations and accumulated data

Harambee stated that through this approach, it provided approximately 1,000 young people with higher employability.