Bikeshop loyalty

[Lou Girardin]

Thank you Jim2. If all the shops were so bad, how come they're still in business?

[Storm]

Personally I've had nothing but excellant service from Phil Turnbulls here in Palmy, especially the workshop guys. No hesitation whatsoever in recommending them

[skelstar]

I hate these threads. The guy who starts them usually has a good story to tell, and then it quickly descends into a "bag this dealer and bag that dealer in public" session.

Youre right. It was a f*cken brilliant story. To be fair, I was praising a shop and someone was offering a counter arguement. But yeah, ya tend to get a few of these threads ...

[ducatilover]

yep.....very very south wairarapa [45mins to welly CBD]

hmmmm it takes me 1hr 30 or something on the bros650...... but i'm in eketahuna

[cowpoos]

Youre right. It was a f*cken brilliant story. To be fair, I was praising a shop and someone was offering a counter arguement. But yeah, ya tend to get a few of these threads ...

I wasn't intentionally trying to bring down you local...you obviously have good repore with them...I had know idea at all....you were praising TSS at the start of the thread...

but that said...I am a employer...and i wouldn't put up with them walking around drinking coffee all day...and doing the bare minium...

[ducatilover]

Thank you Jim2. If all the shops were so bad, how come they're still in business?

yeah i suppose thats a really good point

[Jonty]

I hate these threads. The guy who starts them usually has a good story to tell, and then it quickly descends into a "bag this dealer and bag that dealer in public" session.

Every dealer in the country has pissed someone off at some point. It's part of the game. I prefer to regard my dealings with "my" dealer as a relationship. I piss a lot of people off. I act like a two year old, rail against injustices real and imagined, and can't put together a consistent day of work, let alone a week.

But I am always polite and respectful in a dealership, I sometimes make friends or good aquaintances, or even riding buddies out of people working in shops. It works for you in the long run. The people who work in the trade tend to move around within the trade. Yes, sometimes something is going to cost more than you expected, or something won't be done in time, but a lot of the time the reasons are startlingly close to the reasons you give your own boss for everything from a sicky, through illness, to a death in the family.

The average bikeshop has the same sort of makeup as your own workplace, with everything from the ultra-professional dude who churns out screeds of stuff that LOOKS like he's to doing shitloads, to the dickhead like me, who spends all day listening to Mudvayne, Dave Matthews Band, and Spock's Beard, goofing off, slipping out for, "one more coffee", and generally doing nothing useful except waking up sleepy Dan with my $2 dollar shop rubber band gun.

The point is, screw "professionalism". You should be doing stuff because you like it, or you like helping other people out. A respectful attitude gets a shitload more done than any ITIL procedure, management employee leverage session, or interfacing with the client. I don't demand any more respect than the basic human respect level than means you won't shoot me on sight, and I try to EARN anything above that. I like to give other people the opportunity to earn my respect too. Instant gratification isn't all it's cracked up to be.

9/10ths of perceived bikeshop fuck ups can be put down to your own inability to communicate your own requirements effectively. The last tenth is just a random confluence of negative karma.

Don't burn bridges. Build them.

I tend to agree with most of what you said Jim2. However, motorcycle shops are a business and like any business if it doesn't make a profit it will close.

Without be too general, the source of proift for these bikeshops is quite obviously derived from sales and services provided to its customers. They aren't in the business of manufacturing where the main concern is the quality of the product (how the customer is treated is really a concern of the intermediary). As such, the prime motivator should be to satisfy the customer to the fullest extent possible and that role usually is taken on by its frontline staff.

As an owner of one of these shops you are not necessarily on the shop floor so the ability to assess the performance of key staff is extremely difficult and I would imagine it would usually be taken from a profit for the month calculation. If I was an owner, I would want to know how my customers were being treated and anything else I could do to improve service to them(marketing 101).

As most bikeshops don't use marketing tools such as satisfaction surveys etc, this website would be the perfect tool to assess how frontline staff and indeed the business is doing as a whole. The main issue with this is people using the site to air grievances that should be taken up with individuals concerned (such as staff who are members of this site).

I see no reason why we should not post here and share a poor experience with the overall service of a particular shop provided this is done fairly and on a no names basis (being staff names). If an owner is concerned about a level of negative feedback he can take steps to fix it.

my two cents although I can see arguments both ways.

[Lou Girardin]

As an owner of one of these shops you are not necessarily on the shop floor so the ability to assess the performance of key staff is extremely difficult and I would imagine it would usually be taken from a profit for the month calculation. If I was an owner, I would want to know how my customers were being treated and anything else I could do to improve service to them(marketing 101).

.

Most bike shop owners know very well what their staff are doing, even a big one like AMPS. Bike shops are very different to franchise car dealers.

[skelstar]

...

I essentially agree, BUT, if you ever listen to talkback radio you will know that you generally hear all the negative feedback about a particular subject. Someone starts something relatively positive and can quite quickly be drowned out by negativity. Not saying the negativity is unwarranted (cowpoos - no worries), its just easy to counter an argument/discussion with it...its a part of human nature.

I remember from my salesman days that if you provide good service, and person is likely to tell, say, 2 friends about it. If you provide bad service, 10 friends will hear about it.

[James Deuce]

Good response Jonty, but I think my point got lost in translation.

I think we've forgotten (as a society) how to be good customers. We've accepted the doctrine that the customer's always right, and that a retailer is primarily in business to kiss our collective arses. And like it.

As an example, and I've done this sort of thing myself, one rings up the bike shop and says, " I need the my swingarm bushes replaced."

The workshop rings back and says, "Sorry mate, your bike has a sealed bearing, not a bush, and the price is $X."

This is the bridge burning bit I'm talking about. You can either go, "Oops, I didn't know that, thanks for that.", and then go and quietly research the issue if you're unsure that was the right answer.

Or.

And I've seen this happen here; you can argue with workshop guy, tell him that your mate Fungus said it was bushes , not bearings, and then tell everyone you know that "X motorcycle shop refused to work on my bike, and they're stupid idiots."

Being a good customer entails either knowing what you want in the first place and being knowledgeable about what you want, or being prepared to take advice from an expert. By expert I don't mean Fungus either, I mean the guy with access to the workshop manuals, an apprenticeship in motorcycle mechanics, and 20 years of twirling spanners for ungrateful bastards under his belt. Yes, mistakes happen, but remember YOU make them yourselves sometimes. Cut people a bit of slack and you'll get looked after.

Life is not an endless series of customer satisfaction surveys.

[The_Dover]

Yeah, but what you've got to remember Jim is that if a bikeshop makes a fuck up, can't deliver etc etc then it's respectful to let a customer know, apologise or whatever.

I'm not a difficult customer but I expect certain standards of professionalism and customer service from any establishment that is receiving my hard earned, even the dairy on the corner, and some bike shops I've visited fall short.

Also, you gotta look at why some are still in business! Same reason as Telecom!

[TLRulz]

Service is a mojor factor for me, Theres a couple of places I prefer to avoid and theres a couple of places I prefer to frequent.

If it was about the bike I wanted to buy though, I would buy it from whoever had what i wanted (second hand) for new I would probably be more fussy

[Jonty]

Yes I completely agree Jim2. The majority of customer survey results really have to be taken with a grain of salt. I think in todays society the philosophy "the customer is always right" is a difficult one to reconcile and indeed I think there is merit in the argument that sales people should not feel obliged to "kiss peoples collective asses" but I guess that is the call of the individual owner.

That said, working on the law of averages, if you are recieveing an unusually high number of dissatisfied customers (or a number of issues are raised on this site), you would be fairly safe in assuming something is not working.

It is a an interesting predicament for the bikeshop owner, but in all reality if your competitors adopt a "couldn't care less" attitude then you are going to be onto a winner if you kiss the collective ass.

John