How many of your customers from last year have you heard from this year?
Imagine a customer buys a bike from you in April. He’s happy. The bike fits perfectly, the price was fair, and the experience in the shop was spot on.
Two years later, he buys a new bike. Somewhere else.
Not because he was unhappy, or because the other shop is better.
Simply because another shop happened to be the one he heard from.
The customer is satisfied, but he doesn't come back
Most bike shop owners assume that a satisfied customer is a returning customer.
And that’s an understandable assumption.
But a bike isn’t like a cup of coffee. The customer doesn’t think about you every day.
He thinks about you when something goes wrong, or when someone reminds him that it probably will.
People don’t remember to book their bike in for a service themselves.
Just like they don’t remember to book a dentist appointment or get the car checked before the summer holidays.
It happens when someone reminds them – and not before.
What it costs you to wait for the customer to reach out
Imagine a customer who brings their bike in for a service once a year.
An average service job. Maybe twice, if they cycle a lot.
What happens if they skip a year? Not because they didn’t want it serviced, but because nobody reminded them?
You don’t just lose one service job. You lose the connection. And the longer time goes on without contact, the weaker the relationship becomes. Until the next bike is bought somewhere that happened to be at the top of their mind.
It’s rarely an active choice. You’ve just slipped off their radar.
The customers are already there
A service reminder is simple in practice. It is a message that reaches the customer when it makes sense to get their bike checked again.
For some shops, that might be a yearly reminder after a service visit. For others, it could be based on a recent bike purchase, seasonal timing, mileage, warranty checks or specific customer groups.
It could be an SMS or an email.
The exact setup matters less than the timing.
What matters is that the customer hears from you at the right time.
It’s one of the rare occasions where reaching out genuinely helps the customer as much as it helps your business.
Why most shops still don't do it
To send service reminders at the right time, you need to know when each individual customer last came in. For many shops, that information is scattered across receipts, spreadsheets, or in the memory of whichever member of staff took the bike in. That means finding the right customers becomes a task in itself – one nobody gets around to.
The idea typically comes up in January when it's quiet. But by the time a system is in place, spring has arrived, the workshop is full, and service reminders slide back down the priority list. And so it never happens consistently.
Service reminders might not seem like the most exciting initiative. But few things in a bike shop have such a direct link between effort and revenue – because the demand is already there. The customer just needs to be reminded of it.
Here’s the uncomfortable part.
Most bike shops don’t lose these customers all at once. They lose them quietly.
One missed service. One year without contact. One customer who simply forgets to come back.
What's hiding in your customer list?
Take the number of service customers you’ve had in the last month.
Let’s say 50.
Multiply by 12.
That’s roughly 600 service visits a year.
In many shops, a significant number of customers don’t automatically come back the following year unless they’re reminded. Let’s say around 40%.
That’s 240 customers.
If a service reminder gets just one in three of them back through the door, that’s 80 extra service visits.
Multiply that by an average service job of – let’s say – £65.
That’s £5,200 in extra revenue without winning a single new customer.
And that’s before upselling, parts, or accessories.
Yes, the figures are hypothetical. But the principle remains the same.
Most bike shops spend a lot of time looking for new customers. Meanwhile, some of the easiest revenue is already sitting in the customer database.
Not waiting for a new campaign. Not waiting for a discount. Just waiting for a reminder.
Because the next bike sale might not go to the shop with the lowest price. It might go to the shop that remembered to get in touch first.
How do you optimize your bike store?
Download our free The Ultimate Bike Store Guide and learn how to spend less time on outdated IT systems and more time on happy customers.
