How the Early Adoption of Automation Boosted Tutero's Success
It feels like ages since the most popular players in EdTech launched their platforms: Khan Academy was founded in 2008, Udemy in 2010, Udacity in 2011, and Coursera in 2012.
However, much has been going on under the radar as the sector is projected to expand into a 421-billion-dollar market by 2032.
Among the new generation of trailblazing EdTech startups there’s Tutero, who stands out as one of the most interesting ones to look at.
With an offering consisting of top-level, personalized online tutoring for school-age children, Tutero managed to grow from 0 to 45,000 annual hours of teaching and raised $3M in funding since being launched in 2021.
Behind the sleek platform and clear-cut services, automation has played an important role in Tutero’s success - and we’ll show you exactly how in this article.
On the hunt for productivity: Tutero’s automation journey
Tutero’s automation journey started early, with the goal of automating repetitive administrative tasks that consumed the team’s productivity but held little value when completed manually.
They relied on Zapier to automate these activities, until the challenge of reducing the workload of the engineering team emerged.
This is where Zapier started to show its limitations and Make appeared on the horizon as the most flexible, cost-effective solution.
The extensive variety of integrations provided by Make, coupled with the exceptionally user-friendly workflow designer, made it an obvious choice for us”,
- Darshan Bhansali, Tuteros’ Product Manager.
By this point, Tutero’s use of Make was already bearing fruit, allowing them to start outcompeting their rivals with significant productivity gains.
Darshan provides a conclusive example of this: “We've enabled a very lean customer success team to operate at 3x-4x the productivity of comparable companies”.
And of course, this is where the actual changes started.
Use cases and results
With Make, Tutero has been able to fully harness the power of automation and scale it across the company in very little time.
Some implementations include:
Tutor recruitment: After automating their tutor recruitment funnel, Tutero is saving 50+ hours of manual work each week. Currently, a single person can manage 250+ tutors thanks to automation.
Payment monitoring: By automatically reviewing payment records and notifying users and the customer success team of payment issues, Tutero is saving 20+ hours of finance work each week, and reducing failed payment issues by 50%.
Lead management: After synchronizing their lead generation funnel, Tutero has reduced response times by a significant margin (nowadays, leads get a full answer in 25 minutes or less on average).
Automated payment monitoring solution by Tutero
Moreover, they’ve rolled out internal, Make-powered solutions to synchronize key information across their CRM, payment gateway, and helpdesk systems, ensuring that cohesive data is available across every touchpoint.
From potential to reality: No-code automation at work
Tutero’s story shows how no-code automation is key in driving productivity and revenue while avoiding the technical and financial bottlenecks found in traditional growth engines.
“We are big no-code advocates and have recently switched all of our automations from Zapier to Make as we found the functionality better and the cost more scalable”, says Darshan. “Make allows us to transport data between systems, reduce repeatable work, reduce the burden on our engineering team, and deliver automated customer sequences at scale”.
On top of this, there’s a second lesson to be learned from Tutero’s experience: Automation is a catalyst for an organizational shift.
By identifying opportunities for automation and designing efficient solutions, employees are driven towards more meaningful work, leaders get more time to strategize, and value gets delivered faster than ever before.
If you also see automation as the backbone of operational agility, don’t let the momentum end: Get your Make account, and start your journey today.
