Two hours a day back, for a six-instructor school.

Before and after

Pen and paper, Google Calendar, six phones. Then Pam.

An instructor sells hours. The hour on the phone between lessons, or at the kitchen table at ten at night, isn't taught and isn't rest. Here is where those hours went in one month.

In Mairead's words

“You don't give anything up. You just get the evenings back.”

I knew we had to move on from pen and paper and Google Calendar. The admin was eating the evenings, and we were losing bookings — a call missed between lessons, and by the time we rang back they'd booked in with someone else. Every possible booking counts.

What was stopping me was control. The diary is the heart of the business and I didn't want to hand it to something I couldn't see. What actually happened was the opposite. The office and the instructors still make the bookings the way they always did, I can see every conversation in one place, and I can see the gaps in everyone's schedule and fill them.

The phone stopped ringing at nine o'clock at night. You don't give anything up. You just get the evenings back — and any bookings at risk of being lost late in the evening.

Mairead MurphyADI 34729 · Blackwater Driving School, Mallow

Schools like yours

What your number would look like.

Blackwater's month works out at about five minutes of office work per lesson taught. Put in your team and your week.

The ratio is Blackwater's own: 62 hours of office work over 694 lessons. A school with more moves and messages per lesson gets more back; a quieter one less.

Still your diary

You don't lose control of the schedule.

Pam books only into the hours each instructor has opened, never over time off, and never past the school's own cancellation rule. Blackwater sets its notice period in Settings; inside the window, the learner is pointed to the team, not waved through. The team kept booking too: 981 lessons were booked by the office and the instructors themselves in the app in the same month, against the 63 Pam booked in chat and the 93 learners booked on their own page or sign-up form.

Pam took 233 requests start to finish and put 197 in front of the team by design: a learner asking for a person, a change inside the notice window, a message that could not be delivered. More than half the requests never needed a person; the rest reached one in the Activity feed, with the learner's number and the lesson beside it.

Learners message the same number and download nothing. Each instructor keeps their own diary and their own RSA login, which never leaves their phone.

The quiet follow-ups

The learners who went quiet, nudged.

A learner who asked about lessons and never finished signing up gets one message from Pam a day later; one who signed up and never booked gets one too. In a month: 24 prospects nudged, 9 came back, 7 booked; 11 unbooked learners nudged, 4 booked. Eleven lessons nobody on the team had to chase, and anyone who doesn't answer is handed to the team once, not messaged again.

Figures from Blackwater's own records, one month, published with the school's permission.