$8,000 in 8 minutes with BikeSource Charlotte - Part 2
We bring to you the last part of our conversation with Donald from BikeSource Charlotte.
Check out part 1, where we talk about implementing Ikeono in the largest Specialized dealer in the region, scheduling and a sneak peek into the new Ikeono portal 🚀.
These conversations are important for Ikeono, and for Matt and Connor from Specialized corporate because we get insights that we wouldn’t have without being on the bike shop’s floor day in, day out.
In this second part of our interview we cover workorder automations, Ikeono campaigns, and how to get insights from customers that don’t shop at your store.
Q: How do you balance automation and keep that human factor alive at the same time?
Brett: Before coming to the bike industry, I worked for the government and had a little bit of midlife crisis that brought me to the bike space – half of us have that story, right? 😅
And day one, the shop said listen, the hardest part of this job is understanding how to properly utilize Lightspeed as an ecosystem.
Checking in inventory and receiving was step one of that because everything compounds off of that action, if you have the inaccurate cost of goods, then it just skews everything.
And my big frustration was when it came to notifying customers, your choices were to:
Stop, go notify that customer, and then run the risk of forgetting to finish the purchase order,
Wait until the end to notify the customer and you end up completely forgetting about it.
So either way, somebody is going to be mad at you. But on the alternative, we couldn't automate it fully because of situations where you have to build a bike.
That circles back to the workorder automation, where it's a balancing act of personalization, but also accounting for the business of the store and needing to get things done quickly.
So you are going to use that message template but you might forget to do those 4 clicks. Have you had those scenarios where you forget to send that message template?
Donald: So our journey through that portion of it leads back to NPS a lot of times. Every week on Monday, I read all of it, every single feedback of every single store that somebody took the time to write.
It takes me 45 minutes to an hour to go through it. I love it when I can learn from somebody else's mistake and we don't have to take the beating for that situation.
(Donald is referring to learning from other Specialized Retail stores and applying those lessons to BikeSource Charlotte).
Learn more about Ikeono’s NPS and Google and Facebook Reviews tool.
So, yes, we do occasionally mess up from time to time.
But we've certainly gotten much better with time, we know our habits, we know what we have to do to take care of these things.
A lot of times we'll have the mechanic who does the repair, but then somebody else entirely different may hand that bike over to the customer.
So they said we want to customize, we want to put in notes when we send this text message because then we have documentation.
We can say we sent you a text message and it said that your drivetrain is probably gonna skip since we just replaced the chain and they're like, oh, ok.
Brett: What we've seen some shops do is they send a text message on the open status, which is the very first status for every workorder, so that
✅ gets your phone number into that customer's phone
✅ sets an expectation of communication via text
but that message is going to come through 10 minutes after they drop their bike, and they know that bike is not done.
It's going to set the expectation that they will get informed via text.
And so it’s that balancing act of you don't want to overshare because then you get those situations where the customer doesn't read and they show up.
Let’s talk about Ikeono Campaigns
Donald: Awesome. Love them. 😍
Brett: So, when we started out, Ikeono would make recommendations to riders based on miles, and we always ran into 3 things
The rider would show up at LBD for their chain, and they’d say what are you talking about? This chain is fine. So they'd immediately cut our legs off as a standalone platform.
80% of customers just didn’t care about the recommendations.
We were just giving them too much information.
Now, with Ikeono Campaigns, it’s their trusted LBD making recommendations that they have built a relationship with.
It’s in line with a conversation they just had with you last week, and it comes from your store's phone number.
Q:Do you strive for your messaging to be general or specific?
Brett: Do you want to reach out to customers and say, hey congrats on the new bike, do you want to tune up or say hey, you just had tubeless tires set up six months ago, you need to replace that sealant.
Donald: I think you wanna be able to do it all.
For example, at BikeSource Charlotte we've always struggled with the tubeless setup. The customer doesn’t ride the bike the day they got it, and later when he goes out for a ride, he finds both tires are flat.
If we had been smart, we would have told them ahead of time that this is probably gonna happen, new set up, new tires, just pump them up and you're gonna be good to go.
We used to have a little card that we would give with tubeless setups, but we want to use campaigns for those.
We want to send them a link that would lead them to our website to learn about the five things you need to know about your brand new tube.
Connor: Yea, we’ve been talking about having educational resources on the sites to use in tandem with campaigns.
Matt: Working at corporate, and not working at the shop level, that's the stuff that you and I will never think about.
Brett: It’s that balancing act of it needs to be educational but not overwhelming.
This is a big store and I see you have a lot of bikes on the floor, for the tubeless setup, do you wait to put the sealant in until that bike is sold?
Donald: Yeah, we keep nothing here with a tubeless setup.
But then the extender of what you just said, which I hadn't thought about is, what happens in 6-8 months?
We saw this tubeless setup, we sold some sealant, do we ask: have you checked your sealant or have you been having problems with the tubeless tires?
Connor: Oh, there’s loads of use cases for that.
Brett: Yea, so back in the day, our slogan was that we are the check engine light for your bike. That was what we were trying to emulate.
We wanted to bring this notion of, people understand why they have to replace their oil every 10,000 miles.
But the bike industry hasn't embraced that standardization and I appreciate that there's a billion variables that could affect it, but bikes are just so complicated and so expensive that having to spend $200-700 a year to keep up a $15,000 bike is not right.
Connor: That just reminded me of the notion of setting up rider profiles within Ikeono, and asking the rider how frequently they use their bike. You could be a lot more prescriptive with when that actual campaign message is sent out.
Donald: That’s cool if you the right customers for that. But that is 3% right?
But the reality is, at BikeSource Charlotte we deal with a lot of family bikes that they come dragging in here that they had stored under their porch for the last six months.
What we do is that we kick off a campaign every time we see ‘tune up’, we're going to say hey, it's been a year since your last tune up, how are things going?
But my favorite campaign and we talked about this when you guys were running the store the other day is the seven day follow up on service.
Connor: People appreciate getting that text message soooooooo much.
Donald: And, our hope was that we would catch the customer that was a little pissed so that they could let us know the shifting wasn't quite working or something like that.
But what we get more than that is, an exciting message, like man I just cruised 22 miles on the Greenway and it felt like a brand new bike and to be able to share that with those guys back there, some positive feedback and, in the days when sometimes our days aren't that kind of right?
Being able to share and, and say, hey, did you guys see those Ikeono responses today?
What the hell man, you guys are killing it 💪🥳👏!
Brett: That's something we've talked about creating this notion of almost a dashboard within the Ikeono ecosystem, showing the positive reviews.
Donald: Like I said, NPS means a lot, being able to see those scores and read those comments, not just for us, but for everybody, this is a big store, I got a lot of people working here.
There's a lot of people that come in and out of the store and a lot of times, I don't know half of what's going on, with the NPS scores, I can see typically what we do, right.
The dashboard would be one more place where I can check up on things. Like I said, in the mornings I go to the campaigns and I check what’s going on.
Q:What are your thoughts on using Ikeono Campaigns to ask nuanced questions?
Brett: For example: Hey, was this bike the color you thought it would be? Did these bibs fit the way you thought they would fit? Did the goo really taste like salted watermelon?
Is that too much?
Donald: Yeah, in my opinion, I think so. What do we get out of it?
Matt: We already know that the color of the bike doesn't look the same as the website. That's not gonna change.
Donald: The only thing I would do is create focus groups, specifically around women’s clothing and just get that local perspective. I've been trying to figure out how to do it for a long time.
I want to figure those customers out, and talk to them. Like, what did you think about our selection this time?
That would be where I would love to get my hands on more information.
Connor: Do you have women on staff?
Donald: Right now, I've just got one, she's a part-timer and is here about a couple of days a month. And then we've got a couple friends of the shop as well.
But even them, they're hard to ask that question to because they're perpetually nice and not super picky.
I wanna hunt down some super picky customers to provide that kind of feedback.
And Molly, the first time she came in here, she was eviscerating us for our sizing and what we didn't have, and what we had.
And as soon as I heard that, I started banging away to figure out what we can do better.
Brett: It can be department based, like asking customers if you had all the sizes they were looking for? Or maybe for color?
Matt: I think that should really be owned at the brand level. Like if you are asking them, hey, did these bibs fit the way you expected them to? That doesn't necessarily mean it was the wrong size that you gave them. It's just more of a matter of the apparel design.
Brett: But it's more to his point of like, we're asking that question and whether we like it or not, like, there's a notion of gender that needs to be taken into account.
Donald: I feel like that's our biggest blind spot. Our women's clothing selection has never been well curated.
We see a catalog, I might show it to some folks, I get some colors, and then boom it's done.
But if I had more feedback and had, that would help guide me.
Brett: Are clothing gendered in your Lightspeed system?
Matt: Do we have them categorized as men and women anymore?
Donald: I don’t believe so.
Brett: And that then begs the next question, you're gonna have mistakes right, for example the husband buying for the wife, but it circles back to my question on Ikeono campaigns in relation to the customer outside of purchases.
Would you all feel comfortable collecting that kind of information? Birthday? Gender?
Matt: You have to be careful with collecting information relating to age now.
Donald: I'm all right with knowing a customer's birthday, just the month and day, I don't care what your year is.
That would be cute because I get it all the time, my phone gets blown up on my birthday from 30 different things.
Matt: Does it piss you off?
Donald: No, it’s somebody wishing me well on my birthday, I typically take that ok. There's a lot of other text messages that drive me off the walls.
Matt: I just thought the funniest one, so Gillette razors send you free razors on your 18th birthday.
Brett: I didn't know that!
Donald: Yeah, I didn't get that, but I was also 18 about a thousand years ago.
Matt: I think the key part about this is that the people that we probably actually want to hear from are the people that came in and didn't buy anything because we didn't have the right selection.
Donald: I think you're absolutely right, it's the customer that comes in, browses through the clothing for 25 or 30 minutes really giving it a hard look and then walks out and doesn't get anything because we didn't have the right color, size, or fit.
Brett: Maybe a QR code pop up specific to inventory over in your clothing section like, hey, didn’t find what you were looking for? Let us know!
Motion Makers using QR codes and Ikeono NPS to gather feedback.
A stand like this in the soft goods section can help you get more insight on how to improve your selections.
