Hey there,
I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. If you need anything, even if unrelated to Stick Shift, please reach out. We’re pretty resourceful and will do our best to help you.
As cities and states begin reopening, we’re preparing to reopen our operations. We’ve seen call volume pick up pretty significantly in the past week. Hopefully, the volume of calls will continue to grow. As we prepare to reopen, I want to take this opportunity to check in with you and cover some important details about our reopening plan.
First, as we’ve always said, we believe that you are the best judge of what is good for you. If you want to teach, great! If not, that’s fine too. We have 100% faith in your judgment and will always defer to your decisions about what you feel is safe and reasonable. You are never under any obligation to take a customer or continue a lesson. We will support your decision if you want to either end a lesson early or not accept a booking regardless of the reason. We also believe that you should have the right to teach if you want to. Some of you are eager to earn money, especially after job loses and work slowdowns. The best way for us to give you the option to choose is to continue to run sales and marketing the mostly the same as we did before Covid-19, with a few changes listed below,
To help you manage your availability, members of our team are going to reach out to you to help make sure you’ve fully set up your calendar and integrated it with your personal calendars. We've published a how-to guide for managing it yourself, which you can find by clicking here. We will also continue to contact you regularly to confirm your availability.
Some instructors have asked us to accommodate special requests about scheduling lessons. I wish we could honor such requests, but with well over 100 instructors throughout the United States, such requests are extremely difficult to keep track of or accommodate. The simplest and easiest way for us to accommodate your needs is for you to keep your calendar up to date. Any further requests or needs should be communicated directly to your customers.
Please communicate with us before canceling a lesson. Contacting us first will give us the opportunity to reschedule the lesson with another instructor. Customers are much more likely to be flexible and understanding if we bring them a solution before informing them that you’re unavailable. Note that if we receive excessive number of cancellations from you, we may need to pause your availability in the system. This is so that we can provide a smooth and easy experience for customers. Once you're able to accept bookings more readily, we're happy to reactivate your calendar.
Customers will be informed that they must communicate with you before the lesson about your health and safety requirements. We will share this requirement during the sales process, in the online registration system, and during the order confirmation process. Note that this will only be a requirement to communicate with you. We cannot communicate your personal safety requirements to the customer for you. As we have over 100 instructors in the system, it would be extremely difficult for us to keep track of each person’s individual requirements. We recommend that you email customers your requirements and make sure they reply in writing that they agree. The contract will indicate that a failure to adhere to your health and safety requirements may result in you canceling the lesson or ending it early. If they do not adhere to your requirements and you cancel the lesson or end it early, they will not be eligible for a refund.
If you have any concerns or questions, please reach out to us at instructors@stickshiftdrivingacademy.com
Cheers,
Giuseppe Frustaci
Founder
Stick Shift Driving Academy