Summary
COVID-19 forced Bicycle Sport Shop to completely restructure our business from a high-touch customer experience to a safely distanced engagement in the digital space. The Bike Finder Quiz was one piece of the digital solution to alleviate staff and customer pain points in the sales process.
Role: Research, interviews, marketing, and form design.
The problem
The inside of all five of Bicycle Sport Shop’s retail locations closed in response to the pandemic’s arrival and the company switched to a curbside service model. Employees would only interact with customers outside the store to keep everyone safe. People, homebound and bored, wanting to try new hobbies or revisit old ones 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. The antiquated phone systems couldn’t handle the call load. Leads were getting dropped and the staff was exhausted.
To alleviate the massive influx of incoming calls, I set up a help form system to funnel customer needs for information about bikes, gear, repairs, and other FAQs to our newly assembled online support team. New bike inquiries, however, always lead to substantial back-and-forth emailing with customers. We needed to speed up this process for the support team.
The solution
The team wanted a 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 (like what kind of bread they are), I developed the Bike Finder Quiz.
I began by interviewing the leader of the online sales team to find out what information was missing from the help form system that could speed up moving customers from initial inquiry to sale. Then, I interviewed three of our top salespeople about their sales process, how they analyze 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. Magenta arrows signify that a customer’s answer changes the next question.
The flow chart was reviewed by the interviewed salespeople and the 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 who is an advanced rider looking for a full-suspension mountain bike, the user persona we referred to as “Gnarly,” would experience the quiz:
Before public release, I tested the quiz with users over the phone and through video calls 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 Results
The quiz initially led to quicker bike recommendations and sales with a 43% conversion rate, and the team was excited to spend less time on a large segment of customers.
However, after a few months online, we noticed customers increasingly filling out the form for fun, leading to false leads. We temporarily pulled it from the site and prepared to integrate the quiz’s structure with our online inventory so customers would land on a page of customized products based on their results. We sold the company to Trek before finishing the next iteration of the quiz.
© 2024 Ashley Hitson.