Tutor Profiles

Often, the first introduction a potential student on Cambly has with you is your tutor profile. Students will often take a few minutes to scan through as many tutor profiles as they can before they decide which tutor to call and start their learning journey with. As such, having a tutor profile that best represents you and your teaching style is essential to having success on Cambly.

While we strive to give tutors as much freedom as possible when it comes to their profile, for the safety of our students, there are requirements when adding your display name, profile photo, and profile video:

Display names should be used as a way for students to identify you. While it can be beneficial for you to also include your skills, (such as Business Talk), we require a recognizable name as well, (John - Business Talk), as this helps students feel more at ease about booking with you! Display names should be free of political, sensitive, or inappropriate content or misrepresentation. If you are uncomfortable using your actual name while in the classroom, feel free to use a pseudonym that your students can use.

Note: Please be aware that due to Trust and Safety concerns, sharing your personal contact information with your students is not permitted. Please do not include any social media handles or emails in your display name.
 

Profile photos: Use a headshot with good lighting where your face is clearly visible and forward facing as these types of photos help students feel safe and comfortable when deciding who to call. Also, please ensure your photo is only of you. Photos should be authentic; drawings, digital renderings, or photos of other people are not permitted.

Profile videos: Focus on your teaching ability and style so that students are able to get a good picture of what it would be like to be in your classroom. You can also show off your personality and interests as well! Your profile video should feature only you, be at least 30 seconds in length and spoken in English, as Cambly is an English language tutoring platform. 

Attendance

When working with students, it is important to note that for reservations and priority hours, there are certain guidelines that we expect all tutors to follow:

Reservations

When connecting by reservations, please be aware that while canceling one reservation will not have any effect on your account, if you cancel or miss multiple reservations in a row, the system will consider your schedule outdated and may clear it automatically. Consistently canceling reservations within 12 hours of the scheduled start time or missing reservations will temporarily limit your reservation calendar to regular students only.

If you are experiencing an emergency and late cancel or miss your reservation, please contact Tutor Support when you are able to and let them know of your situation. If able, please also include when you intend to return to tutoring. While this may not prevent the system from clearing your schedule, it will allow us to internally log your absence so that we can prevent a loss in your ability to tutor due to frequent no shows or late cancels.

Note: Please be aware that due to the volume of these kinds of messages, tutor support will not be able to cancel reservations on behalf of tutors.
 

Priority Hours

When picking up priority hours, please be aware that the expectation is for you to be ready right when the priority hour starts and to answer all incoming calls and honor all reservations during the time you signed up for. Signing in late, ignoring calls, and signing out early may cause your Priority Hours to be automatically dropped, which may hurt your ability to sign up for more Priority Hours in the future (see “Cancellations and No-shows" for more details).

Note: When a student calls you, they use minutes that they have purchased. Because of this, it is important that you not only answer all incoming calls, but that you do your best to stay connected with the student throughout the duration of the call. Otherwise, the student may lose access to any minutes that were not used if a session ends earlier than expected.

If you are approaching the end of your Priority Hour and plan to log off as soon as it is over, please be sure to check off the box in the dashboard that says “I can’t accept lessons that end after x time” This will display your remaining time to students.

If a call comes in that exceeds the time left on your Priority Hour, you have the option to decline it from the dashboard or the phone icon. Only accept calls you can commit to in full. Ending calls early may result in a policy violation.

Priority Hours are intended for tutors to answer every call that comes in. To avoid having to decline calls that extend past your Priority Hour, select the "I can't accept lessons that end after x time" option, pictured above. If you leave this option unselected and routinely decline calls instead, this may be considered a policy violation. 

If you have to leave a Priority Hour urgently, that’s no problem! Our system is designed to overlook one-off misses. If your Priority Hour is within 12 hours but you no longer can make it, it is better to drop your Priority Hour late than to miss it. However, canceling too many Priority Hours short notice may lead to your Priority Hour access being temporarily blocked.
 

Trials

Cambly has implemented additional protections for tutors when working with trial students. When working with a trial student, the student's camera will be turned off by default. Once the tutor has a chance to feel comfortable with a user, they can then choose to switch the student’s video/camera on.

In addition, you have the option to opt out of all trial calls. Simply visit your Tutor Dashboard and click on the drop-down feature to select “subscribed students only (no trials).” This means you will only be visible to subscribed Cambly students. You can switch this visibility on or off as much as you like.

Rude Users and Reporting Students

We work hard to keep Cambly a safe, positive place to teach and learn English by maintaining a zero-tolerance policy for anyone-- student or tutor-- who misuses the service. Unfortunately, tutors sometimes encounter offensive users. Offensive behavior could range anywhere from using offensive language or gestures to nudity.

While we understand how upsetting offensive behaviors can be, we request that tutors behave professionally at all times and ask that they not engage any offensive student. In grossly offensive situations, rather than responding to the student's remark, etc, we empower tutors to report the user from Cambly. To learn more about reporting a student, please see this Help center article.

Note: Reporting a student during a lesson automatically ends the class, so please only report a student during a lesson in cases of extremely offensive behavior, such as profanity, nudity, or hate speech.

You can also report students who send offensive messages by clicking on the wheel icon from the message window and selecting "Report" and then “Inappropriate or sexual communication.”

In other instances where tutors feel uncomfortable or as though they are not a good match for the student, but the user hasn't done something grossly offensive, tutors may report the student outside of the lesson. To learn more about how to do this, please visit this Help Center article.
 

Time Management

When a student books a reservation with you, we request that you honor the full time commitment that they have reserved with you. If you are on a Priority Hour and plan to log off as soon as it is over, please be sure to check off the box in the dashboard that says “Tell students that I will log off after this priority hour.”

If something unexpected occurs and you need to leave a session with a student early, please try your best to let them know that you are ending the call so that they understand the situation. If you know ahead of time that you will need to end the session early, it is best to tell the student at the beginning of the lesson.

 

Note: When a student calls you, they use minutes that they have purchased. Because of this, it is important that you do your best to stay connected with your student throughout the duration of the call. Otherwise, the student may lose access to any minutes that were not used if a session ends earlier than expected.

As much as possible, please ensure that you arrive at your lesson on time. If you prefer schedules with large blocks of reservations when setting up your reservations and Priority Hours, (back-to-back classes to maximize your time), it is best practice to incorporate some breaks into your schedule so that you have time to prepare between them.
 

Support

Cambly Community

If you’re looking for a great place to meet and discuss your experiences with other tutors, you can request to join our Facebook groups, Cambly Corner, Cambly Kids Corner and Cambly Pro Corner. There are also other options to keep in touch with the community such as:

• Subscribing to the Cambly Tutors on YouTube for advice and inspiration from experienced tutors.

Please keep in mind that while interacting on our official social media channels, we expect all tutors to be respectful to all users and admins and to adhere to the guidelines set within those channels.

Note: For the fastest support from the Cambly team, please submit a detailed request to our Tutor Support team.
 

Tutor Support

If you run into a technical issue and can’t find a solution on our Help Center you are more than welcome to reach out to our Tutor Support team. We're a small, but experienced and hard-working team trying our best to help tutors as much as possible. :)

Occasionally, a Cambly team member may reach out to you via email or video chat on the Cambly platform. Please ensure you have an updated email address on your account and respond to all emails in a reasonably prompt manner.

Student Support

Sometimes students, especially trial students, will ask their tutors questions about Cambly. You can find answers to the most frequently asked questions here. If your student is experiencing a technical issue, sometimes you can offer advice, but often the best thing to do is direct them to Student Support ("contact us" on the students' side). They're excellent and can resolve all sorts of matters nearly always in the student's native language.