How Specialized Scaled To 90+ Bike Shops With Ikeono - Part 2

This is the last part of our interview with the Specialized team down at the hive in Austin. If you missed part 1, check it out here. 

The conversation continues with myself (Brett Lang, co-founder of Ikeono) and Kimmi Ward (General Manager), Rachael Cook (Market Manager), and Jackie (service manager) chiming in here and there.

The team thrives off of text threads and building a tight knit community in Austin. 

We cover the discomfort of saying no to customers sometimes, name signatures in text messages, text to pay, and so much more.

Let’s jump right back in.

Q: How do you find the right way to say no to customers?

Brett: Given the nature of texting, are you comfortable saying, no, we don't do that?

Have you had customers pushback on that? Or is it a situation where they appreciate that since you have that hyper focus on the experience. 

Kimmi: It's a yes and a no. So we say no a lot that way we can say, yes. 

And if we're always saying yes to everything it just exhausts everybody, right. There are people that push back, depending on what that pushback is, if it doesn't require a huge lift from us, like, yeah, maybe we'll shift a little something for that particular person.

For the most part, we own our nose. We are ok with that.

Brett: Have you found that COVID has changed customers? The customer’s appreciation of the no from the perspective of the supply chain being so skewed, the workforce was so overburdened, and everybody had to say no. Just out of purely surviving.

Kimmi: I think that there's a lot of truth to that for sure. The way clients interact with businesses has changed a lot. 

I think a lot of it has to do with energy. So if I tell somebody no, because I'm just trying to be an asshole, that's very different than a loving no.

I'm doing something good for my own shop, and the good of the business as well because if I can't do something to the best of my ability, then I'm going to say no, that's for your own benefit. 

So if we say no, I always tell Rachael, make sure to give them another option. Make sure that there's something that person can then take away. So we're not just shutting the door on them. You know, it's like no, but [insert option here]. 

Brett: It's definitely one of those under-appreciated skills in the space. And I get it, the bike industry is a balance of passion and running a good business.

Kimmi: I think that’s the hard part for a lot of bike shops, they're not good at running a business. So many bike shops struggle.

We listen for cues for how that person is carrying the conversation. You know if somebody sends us a text message and it's ten paragraphs long.

If you only send them a little, all good. That person obviously has a lot of things to say. Which in turn, they would like us to say a lot of things back. 

Some people are very short and to the point. That's how they want to be responded to. That’s how they want to be sold to. 

That’s something we focus a lot on, we slow down to speed up, we read back the whole text thread that way we’re on top of what's happening. So we're not backtracking or looking like we don't know what we're doing. We want everybody to be in the know of what's happening.

Q: Do you think customers seeing a name or a signature is important?

Brett: This is a debate we've had for quite a while, the idea of having email signatures for texting. Customers will ask “how do my customers know who is talking to them?”

And our stance has always been that it shouldn't matter because they're communicating with your business. So everybody should be representing your business to your standard as the owner. 

Kimmi: It's pretty rare that we identify ourselves.

For example, yesterday I was chatting with this guy, he called, and generally what I always tell everybody is if they call I tell them, hey, just so you know, we run everything through our text thread, and that way we have a paper trail. 

I'm going to shoot you a text. I'm going to recap a little bit about what we've talked about. So my colleagues can hop on and answer any future questions.

But I was chatting with him and he wanted to get a chisel, and my colleague from the Domain store has the chisel. And so he popped in and he said: Hey, Tim, this is Chip from Domain. I just wanted to chime in for a moment. 

So in that instance, it makes a lot of sense to identify yourself as it would be really awkward, the customer will think, wait a minute, I was just talking to somebody else. 

But 90% of the time most people just think they're talking to some dude. 

Rachael: Yea, people will meet me out and about and say: hey you helped me in the store last week! And I say: no, it was probably Kimmi. And they are convinced it was me. Then they go: No. Yeah. It was you. Maybe it was Avery. You could have been Susan. Yeah. Right. And they just cannot wrap their heads around the fact that we have more than one female working in the store like I almost never engaged with riders.

Kimmi: We take a lot of pride in our balance that we have here in the shop. 

Brett: I looked at your About page and you have a really good balance.

Kimmi: The balance is clutch for us.

Brett: Actually, it reminds me of the car mechanic shop I managed, and I remember I hired a female mechanic in North Carolina. And there would be situations where she would be recommending services. And the guy would say: I want to talk to a real mechanic.

Have you experienced that in the bike industry? 

Kimmi: Oh yea, just yesterday. I took Jackie out with me, and I said: I need you to bro down with this guy.

Jackie: It's so ridiculous!

Brett: Do you find the anonymity of texting helps with that?

Rachael: Yeah, some people when they meet me, they can’t fathom that I'm the one that sold them their bike.

Kimmi: The anonymity is really clutch. Because it's like fake it till you make it. If somebody on the backend of the text thread thinks that the biggest coolest bro know-it-all dude is messaging them, then that's great! 

Q: What are your thoughts on mass texting? 

Brett: Yea, whenever the notion of mass texting comes up. I say, “it’s Amazon that gets to do that and everyone hates them for it.”

Kimmi: I don’t even know what you mean by mass texting? 

Brett: Essentially, ten percent off coupons every five minutes. 

Kimmi: No, I think it's our one last personal way of communicating as a business with people. And it should be very, very tightly managed, loved on, and taken care of.

Brett: Out of curiosity, do you think emoji's will help or hurt that?

Kimmi: Emojis help everything, I love emojis 😁🤗🫡.

Brett: Yeah, so that's part of the new release, emoji support, but I take it very hostile when my dad replies with a thumbs up on everything 👍.

Kimmi: Yeah, I don't want emojis to replace conversations, it should be a little accessory. They should set the tone.

Q: Has a text conversation that you've been able to look back on ever solved a they said/they said situation?

Kimmi: Absolutely. That's huge. 

Rachael: Yea, it’s even a coaching opportunity with staff. 

It shows the sales process and you get to see the EQ (emotional intelligence) in that conversation, and often you want to mirror how the customer is communicating. 

It also teaches you text etiquette, and you get to see the nuts and bolts of the sales process because it's all there, right. Kimmi can go back and look at things and coach the team. Kimmi is running the store, and you can only be in one place at one time. 

But if the conversation happened on the phone, then you just don’t know how the conversation went. There’s just so much more coaching opportunity with the text thread.

Brett: Yeah, and for example at the shop I worked at we would call and make recommendations for service. They would approve, but they were half listening because they were busy. They come in, look at what you did and say they didn’t approve of it. 

Have you experienced that? And has texting helped with that? 

Kimmi: Absolutely, and the fact that we don't deal with that very much is a testament to how valuable the text thread is. 

If Jackie's having a conversation, Jackie is really thorough in the text thread about all of the work that needs to be done, so it's really easy to look back on those conversations.

As a salesperson too, if I'm handing off a serviced bike to somebody, it’s way easier for me to just look back through the text thread. And if I'm building a work order, sometimes I'll just copy exactly what the rider asked for in the text thread, and I will put that in the Lightspeed work order notes. 

It’s just so helpful for service, people can send us photos or videos, and just having that ability means they don't have to drag the bike into the shop. And we could just really quickly be like, oh, just push this lever forward. There, you just saved them a whole trip. 

Q: How do you use Ikeono campaigns?

Kimmi: We were actually looking at some reports and we saw that people who have bought a bike in the last 365 days  have not been back for service. And what we do is, we reach out to them and ask them some questions first.

And actually, the San Diego hive once they've set an appointment for a new bike, in an effort to help accessorize next, they're sending people to content rich resources that are either embedded on their own website or on a Youtube channel.

Instead of trying to do that conversation in the text thread, which feels a little pushy. 

Brett: That was the very first use case we did with the Ikeono campaigns and Specialized.

So when any new e-bikes or new turbo bikes were purchased at Santa Monica Costa Mesa, a week later, they got a text saying like, you know, welcome to the Turbo family, here's a link to some cool stuff about your new ride and it had the Rider app.

And that was the power of embedding that content on your website, because it gets them to the website where they can then continue to transact.

You are being educational and not necessarily sales-y, for example you’re educating them on the top five things that new riders need, like helmet, shoes, bottle cages, and so on.

For the clients that are more price conscious, it’s important to separate some recommendations from that initial transaction. Once they are past that initial sticker shock and they've experienced the pain points of not having the added accessories, then you can make a gentle recommendation and say: I know your bike has pedals, but I promise these ones are going to give you a better experience.

Kimmi: Yea, the trick is to capitalize on that window of opportunity. 

Brett: That's the cool thing about doing it on by text, you can build out a curated recommendation list, send the text message then give them the ability to buy it through payments right there.

Q: How often do you use text to pay and how comfortable are customers with the experience?

Kimmi: I would say 99% of our transactions go through Ikeono, so our riders are already comfortable with text to pay.

Brett: Have you had any pushback on text payments? Has anybody been like I'm not comfortable using this link?

Kimmi: Only when we were brand new and people thought we were a scam business. Again at the beginning we were just setting everything up, like once we had worked through the whole conversation and they're stoked and we send them the invoice and they say: “Wait a second, you have no address on Google, you have no reviews!”

But that was early days only, beyond that, everybody finds the stuff they need on their phones.

And there are going to be people that would never put their credit card number in their phone, but like they usually aren't doing business with us.

You know, I actually thought the older crowd was gonna fight, but they’re excited to do it.

Brett: Yeah, and my vet does text payments now, and we love it!

Kimmi: Yeah, we really don’t get much pushback.

Brett: We get this question a lot from business owners, they say: do you find the customers are uncomfortable with this?

I tell them if they're not comfortable with it, it means they're not comfortable with your business. You are communicating with them from your store number via text, and you're having a full dialogue about something very specific.

Of course, if you're just sending links to people randomly hoping they pay them, then yeah, that’s sketch, don't do that. 

It’s all about how you position it. This is something incredibly convenient for all parties involved that makes this process incredibly more efficient.

Q: In what ways has the use of texting helped the store showcase its personality and build strong bonds with customers?

Kimmi: So, the other day we used one of our templates, it’s for curbside pick-up and it says: Don't come into the building, otherwise you'll be greeted by a pack of dogs.

And most people are like, oh, I'm coming in, and one guy was like, if that is how I have to exit the world, by getting attacked by a giant fluff ball, then that's how I want to go.

I think it’s so important to just try to humanize it to the best of our ability and to honor it for what it is.

If you are going to automate things, and come across like a bot, then it’s important to make it fun and use humor,  and lightheartedness. 

I think that’s what has made it really successful for us.

Check out the first part of the interview to read about the text messages Chief sent 🐶🤭.

Brett: I think a lot of people are a little nervous to embrace that.

They feel like that is overstepping the boundary versus if there's any area to embrace that kind of communication, it is through texting.

Kimmi: We have to look at it from both angles. Will this be a benefit to the rider? And it's going to be a benefit to us.

And if it’s hell yes on both sides, then let's do it because it's gonna work out if that's the case,

If we're trying to do it because we're just scaling and we're trying to depersonalize and be lazy or, or, you know, whatever, it's not gonna land quite as well. And if it's just good for them and not good for us, that's also not gonna land.