AI Avatar for Counsellors: How to Build One in Elivio Avatar Studio

An AI avatar for counsellors is a guided assistant that talks to prospective students and parents on your practice's behalf, captures their details and hands every conversation to you for review. In Elivio, you build one in Avatar Studio in four steps: pick a face, give it a personality, set its boundaries and publish a share link. Conversations then land in your Intake queue, where you decide who to onboard.

It doesn't replace your counselling. It handles the first conversation, so your time goes on the students you actually take on.

Why counsellors use an AI avatar

Most practices lose prospective students in the gap between "I'm interested" and the first call. Messages arrive late at night, on weekends and while you're in sessions. By the time you reply, some families have moved on.

An avatar closes that gap. It's available at any hour, asks the right intake questions and passes everything to you in a structured way. Elivio describes it as an avatar that answers parents and students in the counsellor's voice, around the clock.

What you need before you start

• An Elivio account. Sign up as a counsellor, choosing Independent Education Counsellor or School Counsellor.
• Ten minutes to write a short greeting and decide on its tone.
• A clear idea of what you don't want it to say. That's the most important part.

When you sign in from the avatar link on Elivio's landing page, you'll land in Avatar Studio.

How to build an AI avatar for counsellors in Elivio

Open Avatar Studio ("Build, publish, and review guided student intake") and click New Avatar. The Build an avatar wizard has four steps.

Step 1: Pick a face

Choose one of the default faces, or choose Create your own face. Creating your own face uses a short training video of about 60 seconds, which you can upload or record. The recording flow walks you through a consent line and then a short speaking section.

Your own face needs a paid plan. On the free plan, you get one avatar with a default face, which is a perfectly good way to start.

Step 2: Give it a personality

Set:

• Name for the avatar.
• Greeting, the first thing a student or parent reads.
• Tone: Warm & encouraging, Crisp & professional or Friendly & casual.
• Anything else? (optional) for extra guidance in your own words.

My tip: write the greeting the way you'd open a first call. Short, friendly, and clear about what happens next.

Step 3: Set the boundaries

This is the step I'd spend the most time on. Three rules are always on:

• Always identifies itself as an AI.
• Never promises admission or a scholarship.
• Hands off to a human the moment a student says anything distressing.

Then add Your own rules (optional). For example: don't quote fees, don't recommend specific universities in the first conversation, or always suggest booking a call for detailed questions.

These boundaries are what make the avatar safe to put in front of families. Elivio's own guidance is explicit that avatars are an aid, not a replacement for a counsellor or emergency care.

Step 4: Publish and copy your link

Click Publish, then Copy the share link. Send it to prospective families, add it to your website or Instagram bio, or include it in your WhatsApp replies.

Review your Intake queue

Back in Avatar Studio, the Intake queue tab shows each conversation as Conversations, Needs review or Onboarded.

Open a conversation to review what the student or parent said and what was captured. If you want to work with them, click Save & Onboard to add them as a student. They'll then appear in your student list.

I'd review the queue daily at first. You'll quickly see whether the greeting and tone are working, and you can adjust the avatar's personality and rules accordingly.

Use the avatar for intake when inviting students

When you add a student from your dashboard with + Add New Student, you can either send an invitation directly or choose Share intake link. The intake link can be a form or an Avatar link, described as "Guided intake with live profile fill." Your avatar needs to be published first.

This works well when a family has already contacted you: instead of a long form, they have a short guided conversation that fills in their profile.

Once students are onboarded, they can work through the activities you recommend in Elevate (Elivio Copilot), which checks each task as they go. Our getting started guide for Elevate shows what they'll see, and how counsellors can run passion project programs covers designing those activities.

What the avatar won't do

Be clear about the limits before you share it:

• It won't counsel. It handles first conversations and intake, then hands over to you.
• It won't promise outcomes, and it always says it's an AI.
• It isn't a crisis service. It hands distressing conversations to a human.
• Training it on your own documents isn't part of the current build wizard. The four steps are face, personality, boundaries and publish. Use the optional personality notes and your own rules to shape how it responds.

Plans and pricing

The free plan includes 1 avatar using the default face, with 5 students, 3 recorded sessions, 3 reports and 100 one-time trial credits. Your own recorded faces, more than one avatar and calendar and meeting integrations need a paid plan. Plans are credit-based, monthly or annual, and you can cancel anytime.

What to do in the next 15 minutes

Open Avatar Studio, click New Avatar and build one with a default face. Write a greeting, choose a tone and add two rules of your own. Publish it, then open the link yourself and have a test conversation as if you were a parent. You'll learn more from that than from any guide.

For the bigger picture on running a practice, see Experiment Labs' infrastructure for education counsellors. And for tracking students once they're onboarded, read how to track student progress in Elivio.