Designing the experience layer behind Cuemath's parent-teacher meetings
I worked at Cuemath in the CEO's office and I helped build the parent-teacher meeting (PTM) system that lifted customer renewals 38%
COMPANY
Cuemath
(Global K-12 EdTech)
ROLE
Program Manager, Customer Experience with product adjacent work
DURATION
Oct 2022 – Jun 2023
TEAM
Customer Experience Team · Product Manager · Engineering · Teacher Training Team
I OWNED
User Research · User Insights · Content Strategy · Evaluation Rubrics · Teacher Training
The Problem
Retention was dwindling. Parents rarely met with tutors and had little visibility into class progress. Conversations were unstructured, and there was no shared language for a good parent-teacher meeting or feedback loops to spot problems before refund requests came in.
The Solution
A parent-teacher meeting app (PTM) connecting parents and tutors, with a structured quarterly conversation where the student's progress was discussed in an orchestrated way.
The Outcome
Trust and clearer communication between parents and tutors, facilitated by Cuemath Customer Experience Team, led to a 38% increase in customer retention across regions.
What is Cuemath?
Cuemath is a global after-school math tutoring platform for K–12 students. Each child gets a dedicated tutor for live, 1:1 online classes, with a curriculum aligned to US Common Core and international standards. The platform serves families across India, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East.
My Role
Building the Experience for Customers
As part of the CEO's office, I worked with engineers, a product manager, and the tutor excellence team to build a parent-teacher meeting (PTM) product in a 6-month timeframe. Tutors had to coordinate across time zones with parents, and often didn't know what to say, leading to friction on both ends.
The PTM app was decided as a quarterly exercise to walk parents through what their child had learned. The content team agreed to provide quarterly progress reports for each student.
User Research: Listening to 40+ tutor FGDs
I started by looking at how the meeting flow could be structured. I listened in on and reviewed notes from 40+ Tutor Focus Group Discussions across the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and MENA. Two clear needs emerged: tutors needed to build trust with parents, and to convey progress without making them feel attacked or disappointed. I mapped these into a broad user-journey flow for the PTM conversations between parents and tutors.
User Insights: What made parents upset?
In further analysis of tutor FGDs with over 400 tutors, a clear pattern emerged: parents asked many uncomfortable questions that tutors didn't feel equipped to answer.
I grouped these into 4 parent concerns.
Content Strategy: 5 needs and follow up questions tutors could use
From the user insights, I built out the product's content. Ten parent needs were identified, and for each one I wrote probing questions, the desired vs. vague need statements they should listen for, and an explanation script connecting the need to what Cuemath delivers. The engineering and product team shipped these directly into the tutor app, so every PTM had a structured way to translate a parent's worry into something the tutor could act on.
- Needs to build understanding of fractions, decimals, ratio and proportion from the current or previous grade.
- If no specific topics emerge, the real need is something else that has caused the lack of conceptual clarity, keep probing.
- “Build conceptual clarity.”
- “Build strong fundamentals.”
- Generic need statements with no topic anchor.
Evaluation Rubric
To grade tutor PTM calls consistently, I built an evaluation rubric of 25 parameters across 4 stages (opening, listening, presenting progress, planning). Each parameter had three expectation levels to grade the tutors on. A team of 6 quality reviewers used it to score recorded calls and feed coaching back to tutors. A sample portion of this rubric is added here to click through.
Training content and walkthrough production
Once the PTM flow and rubric were set, I wrote and produced the training content that took 40,000 tutors through the new system: scripted module videos, a slide deck for live training sessions, and a walkthrough video for the upgraded PTM app. The training stack was built so a regional lead could run a session anywhere with no extra prep.
Metric
38%
CUSTOMER RETENTION
40K
TUTORS TRAINED
25×4
PARAMETER RUBRIC
6
MONTH BUILD
After a 6-week beta with 400 tutors, the structured PTM flow and probing-question framework rolled out to all 40,000 Cuemath teachers. Customer retention rose 38% across regions as parents reported clearer conversations and stronger trust in their tutors.
What I Learned
I learned to listen carefully and understand what the user actually needed rather than what they were asking. The 'why' behind a tutor's reluctance to schedule a parent meeting wasn't the logistics everyone presumed, it was psychological. Finding the parent concerns and addressing them helped solve for that. I also learned how to work in product sprints, with each iteration leading to tweaks that were understood, discussed, and prioritized. A fantastic team and great collaboration made this project a real joy to work on.