Instructor Support Update – 26th October

Pupil Prepayment System Updates
The pupil prepayment system continues to work well following refinements since its original introduction in July. Last week (w.c 19^th October) saw the highest number of prepaid bookings Bill Plant Driving School has ever received. A record 63% of the driving school is currently fully booked.

Through only allocating students who are financially committed to their lessons, Bill Plant Driving School has seen a very large decrease in reports of cancellations and ‘no-shows’.  There has been a sizeable increase in our instructors’ earnings, alongside the removal of the “first hour free” offer. As we aim to ensure every Bill Plant Driving School instructor runs a market-leading driving school franchise, we have identified further internal improvements to the system that are required.

The current pupil prepayment system will therefore be introducing a one-off £2.99 booking fee to new learner drivers from today for those who choose to prepay with Bill Plant Driving School. As this booking fee will sit on top of the lesson price, it will therefore have no effect on students after the initial prepayment, or on the current charge for instructors.  It will not affect students who book with our instructors directly. This change, having been tested prior to the coronavirus pandemic, had no effect whatsoever on the volume of bookings and you can be assured that we will be closely monitoring the effects of this alteration to ensure this continues to remain the case.

Contacting students
The success of our marketing efforts, alongside the continued expert tuition of our driving instructors, has led to a high level of demand for our services. As student demand rises, it is only natural that managing a larger volume of pupils poses its own challenges for each individual instructor.

However, we would like to take this opportunity to remind you to make the utmost effort to respond to the pupils that are allocated to you as soon as possible and always within 24 hours (even if it is simply a polite text introducing yourself and advising them that you will be in touch the following day if you have not yet had the chance to speak to them).

We have seen an increase in student’s chasing calls from our instructors in the last couple of weeks and this does need to be addressed promptly. By ensuring students are quickly contacted, not only do we provide a high level of customer service, but in cases where students cannot be accommodated in your diary, they are far more likely to be willing to be reallocated to another Bill Plant Driving School instructor if they have not had to wait a long time to be contacted. Please ensure you do your part to help each other by responding to students as promptly as possible and informing the Customer Service team as soon as the student is either booked in or needing to be reallocated.

Further Updates
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic we have aimed to ensure that we keep our instructors as informed as possible on all aspects relating to their franchise and the driver training industry more broadly through our Instructor Support Updates. Moving forwards, while we will aim to produce further updates on a monthly basis.  We will of course continue to provide key information in relation to the pandemic in a timely manner.

We continue to do all we can to support our Instructors, Trainers, Trainees, Staff and Pupils.

Kind regards

Tom Hixon
Head of Instructor Support