Feature
Enquiry Management for Teams is a new web feature which allows you to manage enquiries to multi-instructor schools, dealing with them appropriately and efficiently. This improves customer service and broadens your control of incoming business from enquiry to student, allowing more oversight of their overall learning journey and giving you as a business owner more opportunity to grow your business.
What’s in an Enquiry?
Every enquiry to your driving school is an opportunity for new business, even if you can’t fulfil the requirement at that moment in time. Creating a comprehensive enquiry record, allowing you to decide, in an instant, whether you want to accept or discard the enquiry and be able to do that as well as passing it to one of your instructors easily is essential.
You want to keep track of all your enquiries and be able to see at a glance where a specific one is at. You want to be able to take that enquiry and process it efficiently and accurately first time, every time.
When I was looking for my current vehicle I decided not to get another lease car but opted to buy one instead, my lovely VW Polo. My thinking was that I would continue to teach manual for about 5 years and then swap my teaching to automatic whilst keeping my car and leasing an automatic for the remainder of my time as an instructor. I would keep my VW Polo as my car because I like it so much – did I mention that?
To be honest, this was a bit of a gamble because whilst we all know that the drift towards electric and therefore automatic vehicles is constant and irresistable, I didn’t really have any idea how long that would take and the fact that the government keep moving the deadlines show that they don’t either. Ultimately we probably will all be driving electric cars but it may well not happen in my lifetime.
What I needed was an enquiry management system so that I could keep track of all the enquiries I wasn’t able to fulfil at that time. Then I would be able to identify when shifting my business to ‘automatic only’ made business sense. Far better than a piece of paper that I would then lose or keeping a rough idea in my head – which, these days, would stay there for about as long as an available test slot!
So what else do I get?
Consider what enquirers say when they contact you. Do you have any space (in your diary)? Do you have any female instructors? Do you do automatic? Do you cover ‘location’ (somewhere in the middle of nowhere)? If you are an independent instructor, you should be able to answer these without too much of a problem but if you have a school with 20 instructors, you might need to check. Then you get the more extreme requests such as “I’ve got my test on Tuesday, do you have a car I can use?” or “I want to book some lessons from June 18th next year, can I do that?” (Yes I have, genuinely, had one that was 8 months ahead…)
Enquiry Management for Teams makes all of that a whole lot easier. You can search on postcode or transmission type and you can also see your instructors’ diaries at a click to identify whether they have any capacity. You can see those enquirers that have tests booked and see all enquiries by date so you know who wants lessons when. You can also prioritise students if you want to bring them to the top of the list.
What if…
… one of my instructors says no?
You can simply transfer the student back to the school or directly to a different instructor. Furthermore, we’ll keep track of their journey through your school, no matter how many times they change instructor. The integrity of your data and the traceability that gives you is one of our founding principles and we have maintained it through our transfer tracking facilities.
… one of my instructors leaves the school?
They’ll keep the student (unless you have an agreement with them that they won’t) and their history will be updated accordingly.
…and finally
We don’t believe in only doing half a job. This is phase 1 of Enquiry Management specifically for multi-instructor schools. Phase 2 is already in the works and will concentrate on an enquiry form for you to include on your website to take enquiries directly into the app. Following on its heels will be enquiry management for independent instructors but that won’t signal the end of the road for Enquiry Management. Beyond that, we have several really exciting ideas which will simply blow your socks off…
As always, if you find any issues with this blog or anything else, please contact us at support@mydrivetime.co.uk.
Introduction
Do you ever wonder what goes on in the head of your average 17 year old? Are you astonished that they actually manage to dress themselves sometimes or manage to arrive anywhere on time?
At MyDriveTime we don’t have the answer either, but we do have the Student App which helps you to help your student in their driving journey not only by providing some administrative functions but also by supporting the student in the learning process.
If you have never considered using the student app or have used it and want to know what the student can actually see and do, then this blog post is for you.
The Student App
MyDriveTime’s student app serves as a means of communication between instructor and student and vice versa. Not only does it do the simple stuff like telling them when their next lesson is, it provides a complete record of their learning journey from before the first lesson right through to the practical test and beyond! It gives them access to the progress they’re making in respect to the syllabus along with any resources that you have made available to them. You can make the student app an invaluable asset for your students giving them a distinct advantage over all their friends.
Administrative Support
The student app gives your student information relating to the logistics of their learning journey, such as the date, time and location of upcoming lessons, their current credit and their progress through the syllabus thus far plus the lesson themes that they are currently working on.
The Terms & Conditions document you send can be viewed and signed in app – not with the tick of a box, but with a drawn digital signature.
Lesson reminders arrive as a notification and can be ‘snoozed’ by the student until a time that suits them, making it even easier to adapt to their needs.
The diary gaps you want to fill, by offering your students additional lessons are also made available in-app for them to consider and then accept or decline, with instant feedback to you.
Being able to rely on the app to do some administrative communication automatically for you is tremendously beneficial, saving you time and effort – and it is all included within your monthly subscription.
Although the student app does not need to be open all the time, it is important that notifications are turned on for MyDriveTime so please emphasise this to your students.
Learning Support
In addition to the administrative support that the student app provides, it can also provide considerable learning support, if you choose to use it.
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- Journey Tracking – this allows your student to see where they have been on their lesson. It serves as a useful reminder of any specific problems they have had and they could then drive it again privately if they wanted to.
- Lesson Summary – this allows your student to see what you have written about their lesson. This may be in the form of a simple, short, descriptive summary or it could be a longer description covering aims for the lesson, progress against those aims, areas for improvement, plans for the next lessons, hints, tips, things to watch etc.
- Reflective Log – this allows your student to record their reflections on the lesson, how they felt it went, things they need to work on, things they have learned, things that worry them. You have the ability to set the questions but they supply all the answers and they can be extraordinarily revealing…
- Progress – this allows the student to see the syllabus in its entirety, including their current lesson themes, and how they are doing in relation to it.
- Resources – this allows your student to access resources that you have made available to them whether that be documents, diagrams, photos or videos.
All of the above, presented in a social media type feed, helps your student to feel that learning to drive isn’t just a number of unrelated hours spent with a driving instructor but, instead, a continuous journey of learning a lifetime skill.
Videos
In order to help you to understand what the student app looks like and can do for you and your students, we have created a video just for you.
Click here to watch the video.
p.s., It also shows you what the student will see.
Not only that, but in order to help your students to understand the student app, we’ve done a video for them as well (and in case you think I have regressed about 50 years, it is voiced by Emily Hill, a star in the making!) Click here to watch the video.
And Finally…
IT’S FREE!!!!!
In other words it is already included in your monthly subscription including terms and conditions, lesson reminders and diary gap notifications.
As always, if you find any issues with this release or anything else, please contact us at support@mydrivetime.co.uk.
TL;DR
Release 2.11.0 sees the introduction of Diary Gaps; a brand new feature that helps you turn space in your diary into a booked lesson. Create a ‘diary gap’ in your diary, select the students you’d like to offer it to, and wait for one to snap it up. When they do, the ‘diary gap’ is automatically converted into a booked lesson in your diary, helping you to maximise your time and earning potential.
Diary Gaps – The Essentials
We’ve all experienced those sudden cancellations and faced the problem of trying to fill the gap with someone else at very short notice or twiddling our thumbs over another cup of coffee. Our diary gaps feature solves this problem.
You can now advertise a gap in your diary to as many of your students as you wish and making use of an intelligent algorithm we’ll even recommend those students who are the best fit for that gap. The first student who responds positively to the invitation will automatically put a confirmed lesson in your diary.
Optionally, you can specify that, if the gap is accepted, it creates a provisional lesson instead of a confirmed one.
When you send the invitations to your students, they will receive a notification and will be able to accept, decline or ignore any gap that is being offered. If they choose to accept the gap, they will be able to select their pick-up and drop-off points and the lesson will be automatically created in your diary.
Adding a Diary Gap
Adding a gap is done via the same mechanism as adding a lesson – it’s a new option – and ultimately it will add a lesson of your default type and duration.
Confirm the time that you want the lesson to start, change the duration if you wish and specify whether you want the subsequent lesson to be provisional.
Student Selection
The app will recommend students which it believes to be the best match for your diary gap and list these in order of suitability.
The longer the coloured bar, the more suitable the student is. You are not tied to only inviting recommended students, you can exclude or include students from anywhere in the list just by changing the toggle. You can also invite all your students or not as you require.
Where a student does not have the student app, identified on the list by a warning, they will not receive notification of the gap. However, if they subsequently sign up to the app, they will receive any suitable diary gaps which are still available.
Note: The criteria for the suitability score is a closely guarded secret so we can’t go into too much detail but you can see the score that they get by hovering over or clicking on the coloured bar.
When you click Save, the invitations will be sent to the selected students and the gap will be created in the diary.
Changing a Diary Gap
You cannot change a diary gap. However, you can send it to more students and you can re-invite those already invited but you cannot withdraw an invitation already made. If you want to do this, you will need to delete and re-create the diary gap.
To offer it to more students, click on it and then click ‘Offer to more students’. This will show you any recommended students not yet invited plus all the other active students who are available. It will exclude anyone already invited.
Note: If you choose to re-send the invites, it will not send them to any students who have already declined the offer. However, if they just ignored it, re-sending the invite will send it to them again.
Deleting a Diary Gap
If you decide that you no longer require the gap or that you want to change it, you will need to delete the gap which you can do by clicking the ‘Delete’ button and then confirming the deletion.
The Student App
So, what happens at the other end?
Any students that you have selected, who use the student app and have notifications turned on, will receive a diary gap notification. This is one of the reasons why we recommend that your students allow notifications from the MDT app.
If they click that notification or go into the app anyway, they will get a pop-up showing any and all available diary gaps that they have been invited to take. Alternatively, they can drag the notification open and respond directly using the options available.
If they open the app, they can accept or decline the diary gap by clicking the relevant button. Alternatively, if they want to come back to it later or want to keep the option open, they can ignore the diary gap by clicking the X in the top right corner.
Note: Diary gaps are processed on a ‘fastest finger first’ basis. Therefore, the first student to complete the booking process will get the booking. We do not ‘hold it’ for 15 minutes while they consult their friendship circle via social media! If they are unlucky enough to miss out, we let them down gently.
Accepting the Diary Gap
The student gets the option to select their pick-up and drop-off addresses if they want to with their default address being shown first. They can also add a new address although we would recommend that they discuss that with you as it may not be convenient.
Once they choose ‘Book Lesson’ the diary gap will be deleted and a lesson put in its place in your diary. You will receive a notification that the lesson has been booked, which if you click on it will bring up a preview of the lesson in your diary.
Declining the Gap
If the student declines the gap, your diary will be updated accordingly with a little cross in a red circle followed by the number of students who have declined the gap. If you click on the gap itself, you can see who has declined and when.
And Finally…
Not Clever Enough? Too Clever?
In designing this new feature we have tried to add some intelligence to make your job easier, specifically in relation to the recommendations of students to fill any gap that you have. We believe the recommendations it makes will be sensible but now we need your feedback.
You know your students much better than we do so you may notice that a particular student is always being left out of the recommendations or is always at the top when you know better. If there are persistent anomalies i.e., the same student over and over again, or you think the app should take something else into account when making its recommendations, why don’t you let us know via the usual method?
And as always, if you find any issues with this release or anything else, please contact us at support@mydrivetime.co.uk.