An online portal should be a student or parent’s first stop for the answers to their questions. No need to repeat yourself any longer. An online portal is also a great way for your students to engage with your business outside of their scheduled lesson times. They can bring part of that experience home with them. Rather than your lessons being a weekly affair, an online portal allows students to interact with your tutoring business during their daily practice.

The TutorBird Student Portal provides your students with access to their schedule, business news, lesson notes and teaching resources you provide. To really cut down on your workload, let TutorBird know your policies so the system can automatically handle event registration and cancellation. This enables students to register for open lesson slots and let you know of an upcoming absence without you needing to personally handle it by phone, email or text messages at all hours of the day. In the event of a cancellation, it will follow your policy. This means it has the potential to automatically adjust billing or track make-up credits for you. All of this will add more value to your student’s lesson experience and drastically reduce your unpaid administration work.

Just make sure your portal provides value to your students. This could mean populating your student portal with learning resources. Sharing worksheets, e-books or slideshows are all great examples. Start small and add material as you go. Over time, this will grow into an extensive library of online resources for your students.

Encouraging Student Portal Use

So, you have put all this time into setting up your Student Portal for your business. How do you get your families to log in and use it? Most of your families will immediately see the benefits of the online portal and begin using it right away. They no longer need to wait for you to pick up the phone or return a voicemail, email or text. Every tutor has a couple families that are resistant to change. It may take some time for them to get in the habit of referring to the portal but it will have some long term gains for you and them. What’s next?

You’ve always been their source for answers and we need to change that habit. It’s going to take a little bit of patience, coaching and repetition but everyone will come around. Always make the portal the most accessible and convenient option for your parent’s questions.

Download our FREE Student Portal Cheat Sheets here to provide easy-to-follow instructions to families on some of the most common features in the Student Portal!

Make sure your Student Portal has the answers to your most frequently asked questions.

It needs to be the one stop solution to your family’s questions. Review the information regularly to make sure you are sharing the most up-to-date info. It’s easier for you to record it once in the Student Portal rather than individually communicating information to dozens of families.

If someone reaches out to you with a simple question, refer them to the Portal for the answer. As an example, think about when a parent calls to make changes to their schedule. You can reply, “I’m sorry, I’m not in front of my computer right now, but you can log into the student portal to view your upcoming schedule and register or cancel your lessons”. If a family asks what they owe you, refer them to the Student Portal for their balance. If someone asks what they should practice this week say “I included that in your lesson notes. Did you check the Student Portal?”

If families are sending their questions by email or text, don’t just give them the answer. Your reply can be detailed instructions on how to find the information in the Student Portal.

There might be some growing pains at first, but over time this will form a habit and have long term success for your tutoring business, drastically reducing your time spent performing unpaid admin work.

You can try out TutorBird free for 30 days, and see firsthand the benefits of a Student Portal. Connect with your families easier and cut down on time spent doing admin tasks. It’s a win for everyone!