The (road) cycling season is over north of the 49th, and as such there is a lot more time for a mechanic to sit around and contemplate life. Or at least that's what I ought be doing rather than shopping for parts I don't need and staring at the wall. However, of late I have been thinking about the nature of shops, of the job, of retail, of cycling, of racing and commuting, and how they all connect to form the cycling world out here on the west coast.
More specifically, I've been thinking about some of the problems that seem to come up pretty regularly, and how the way customers and shop staff conceive of and relate to each other shapes these problems.
Par Example:
This past week, we've had several customers balk at their bills when they come to pick up their bikes. Part of this is that some customers don't really know what parts cost, and unless they ask specifically, we tend to assume they have a general idea of what they are getting into, cost wise at least. But a more important factor, I think, is the way we assess repairs and the lack of real communication between the person who is working on the bike and the riders themselves.
As bike shop employees, we are constantly immersed in bicycles. They unavoidably take on a level of importance to us that is grossly disproportionate to how they function in most peoples lives. I'm not talking about the racers and club riders here, or even the enthusiast. I'm talking about the people who come in with bikes they ride three times a year, who have bikes that they leave at the cabin or on the boat for a quick spin every once and a while, or that simply use them as transportation without being invested in their flawless function. Too often our impulse is to hold these sorts of bikes to the same standards as we would our own, or as we would bikes that are pressed into different sorts of service. To do so is to focus only on the bike and not on the rider.
Talking to the rider, and ascertaining exactly what they want the bike to do can be the most important step in providing excellent service. It's easy to tell someone with a 15 year old department store bike that it will cost five times what the bike is worth to make it work well, but it isn't useful, nor is it likely true that the estimate is accurate given what the rider needs from the bike. I think it's time that we began to take in repairs by asking many of the same questions we do when we sell bicycles, all directed at why the rider has brought the bike for repairs. If someone brings in a bike with a brake rubbing and we tell them it will cost 300 dollars to replace the whole drive train plus 60 dollars labour, I think we're ignoring what the rider is telling us. The gears may be skipping, the tires low, the bb loose, but if the rider tells us the brake rubs and that's all, it's likely because they have a very different view of what their bike is supposed to do than we do. We discount this view because the customer lacks the expertise to identify these problems, and as such it is our place to inform them what needs to be done. This usually assumes too much. We may know exactly what is wrong with the bike according to our standards, but we don't know better than the rider what they need from the bike, what they can afford to or are willing to put into it, and if they even care that the wheels wobble and the bars are crooked.
I think it may be time we gave a little more credit to the rider's themselves, particularly the ones that are obviously not as invested in bikes or in cycling as we are. How they see their bikes is just as important as how we see them, and the two views are often perpendicular. To be willing to hear exactly what the rider is trying to tell us without correcting them according to our own cycling-immersion-skewed outlook can be as important as mechanical ability. The perfect service is one with which the rider is satisfied and can feel that they have been listened to and understood, and has participated in the decision making process when it comes to their repair. Sometimes a quick brake adjustment is all a bike really needs - even though to our eyes it may be falling apart - to satisfy the rider.
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