The inside of Bicycle Sport Shop’s retail locations had closed in response to the pandemic and the company switched to a curbside service model. Employees would only interact with customers outside the store in order to keep everyone safe. People, homebound and bored, wanted to try new hobbies or revisit old ones and were coming to the shop in droves. At the current rate, it was impossible for employees couldn’t keep up with the demand of customers looking for new bikes. And the phone systems couldn’t handle the call load.
I set up a help form system to funnel customer needs for information about bikes, gear, repairs, and other FAQs to alleviate incoming calls. But new bike inquiries always lead to a lot of back and forth emailing with customers for our newly assembled online support team. The team wanted a more detailed way to pre-screen people and guide them to the bike of their dreams before they physically came to the shop. Since people love online quizzes that reveal aspects of themselves, I developed the Bike Finder Quiz.
I began by interviewing the leader of the online sales team to find out what kind of information was missing from the help form system that could speed up moving customers from the initial inquiry to a sale. Then, I interviewed one of our top salespeople about her sales process, how she analyzes customers, and common customer desires and concerns. From the interview notes, I made a flow chart for the quiz.
Black arrows indicate that an answer would not affect the next question in the series, while magenta arrows signify that a customer’s answer changes the next question.
The flow chart was reviewed by the salesperson and online team leader for any potential flaws or areas of improvement, then the quiz was built using Jotform. Here is an example of how a customer that is an advanced rider looking for a full-suspension mountain bike would experience the quiz:
Before public release, I tested the quiz with users over the phone and on Teams to make adjustments before it was marketed to the public. After launch, I monitored early usage to identify additional alterations based on quiz responses. The online team was initially was excited about the defined answers from customers leading to quicker bike recommendations. It made their job easier.
However, after a few months online, we noticed customers increasingly filling it out for fun, leading to false leads. We pulled it from the site, with the solution integrating the quiz with our online inventory when developer resources are available in the future. In this integrated phase, the customer’s answers would generate a page of purchasable products instead of creating a lead for the support team.