15/07/2026
Last week we delivered the first sessions of my new one-day course, Driving Profit Through Your Front of House at the Service Advisor Academy
The standout exercise of the day was one I created called Workshop Tetris.
Each team was given a workshop with five technician profiles, 20 customer jobs, one workshop controller and two service advisors. Some bookings contained excellent information, others were missing key details, and throughout the exercise they were hit with the same unexpected challenges we all experience in a busy workshop.
The objective? Build the most productive workshop possible, with upsell time identified and allocated.
Just like Tetris, you win by leaving no gaps. In a workshop, those gaps are lost utilisation.
Very quickly, the teams realised that success didn't just depend on moving jobs around a diary. It depended on the quality of the information gathered before the vehicle even arrived.
When a booking lacked information, they had to decide:
What questions should have been asked?
Could the job be accurately allocated?
What effect would this have on the technician, the customer and the rest of the day's schedule?
It sparked some fantastic discussions because the consequences became obvious. A two-minute conversation at the booking stage can save hours of disruption later in the day.
That's exactly what I wanted people to experience.
Rather than telling people why good booking processes matter, they felt the operational impact for themselves.
Watching teams debate, problem-solve, adapt and work together under pressure was brilliant, and the feedback afterwards confirmed it was one of the highlights of the day.
Thank you again Servicesure, it was fantastic to meeting some of the amazing garages on your network.