Lightspeed Retail (now known as R-Series), is a fantastic POS. We’ve used it in our own shop since way back when it was a lesser known product known as MerchantOS, before its acquisition by Lightspeed in 2013. Both Lightspeed and MerchantOS built their respective brands with a focus on the needs of bike shops, and on the whole have done a great job.
Unfortunately, despite Lightspeed’s initial success in the bike shop retailer space, there remain some significant shortcomings that prevent it from properly providing all the tools required to manage the service-centric experience most bike shops strive to achieve.
Running a bike service and repair shop comes with its own set of challenges, especially when it comes to appointment scheduling, customer relationship, and service management. It’s for these reasons that we created Velodrop in the first place. Our intention is not to replace the tools that currently work. Lightspeed is a fantastic POS, but we are here to fill in the missing bits. Below are the ways Velodrop adds additional capabilities to your workshop, and works together with Lightspeed to produce the ultimate in service efficiency and shop optimization.
Intuitive Calendar View
Lightspeed Retail’s limitations become particularly evident in its lack of an intuitive calendar view for displaying work orders. Appointment scheduling for bike service and repair shops requires a visual representation of daily activities to optimize resource allocation and ensure efficient operations. Unfortunately, Lightspeed’s generic interface lacks the visual clarity needed for service-centric businesses to manage their schedules effectively.
Velodrop steps in to address this gap by introducing an intuitive calendar view tailored specifically for bike service shops. The Velodrop calendar provides a clear, visual representation of daily appointments, making it easy for staff to manage and optimize their schedules. With a user-friendly interface, the calendar view enhances overall efficiency, allowing mechanics to see and prioritize their workloads at a glance.
Automated Availability Management
Managing the availability of service appointments on a daily basis can be a time-consuming task, especially when relying on manual adjustments. Lightspeed Retail lacks the automatic tools needed to streamline this process, potentially leading to overbooked schedules, frustrated customers, and stressed staff.
Velodrop introduces automatic management of availability on a daily basis, allowing bike service shops to set parameters and let the system handle the rest. This capability ensures that the available slots are dynamically adjusted based on factors like repair times, staff availability, and overall workload. This automation reduces the likelihood of scheduling conflicts, improves staff productivity, and ultimately enhances the overall efficiency of the workshop.,
Online Booking Forms
With this automation and control in place, it then becomes possible to safely provide customers ways to book their appointments online on their own without the fear of your tech team getting in over their heads. This can save your shop a lot of time otherwise spent on the phone with customers. Customers can also save themselves the time spent traveling to your shop or talking on the phone just to schedule an appointment for a later date, making doing business with you that much easier.
Fun fact!
Communication
Establishing and maintaining strong relationships with customers is pivotal for service-oriented businesses, and effective communication is at the heart of it. By default, Lightspeed doesn’t have many communications tools built into it. You can email receipts and quotes to customers, but that is about all, unless you install some expensive third party integrations to expand its capabilities, (eg. Ikeono for SMS messaging).
Velodrop, recognizing the importance of communication in the service industry, was designed with two-way communication capabilities from the beginning. Velodrop’s messaging system allows service and repair shops to engage in personalized interactions with customers. From appointment reminders and service updates to post-service feedback, the two-way communication features enhance the overall customer experience.
Communication is not just an external tool either. Velodrop has plenty of built-in methods to assist in internal communications between your managers, service writers, mechanics, and sales staff, allowing your team to seamlessly collaborate on fulfilling service orders, and other workshop tasks efficiently.
Perhaps most importantly of all is the communication line between the user and the Velodrop team itself. We actively support and encourage shops to provide feedback and tell us their needs and desires. We set out to build the ultimate software specifically for bicycle repair workshops like yours, and are excited whenever we learn about a new pain-point shops are experiencing that we can work to solve. Some of us have been in the pits as bike mechanics just like you are now and we still share the joy of creating happy bike riding customers.
Conclusion
We believe in something akin to the Unix Philosophy – that software should try to do one thing, and do it well. Lightspeed does its thing, and that is the retail point of sale. Velodrop does service scheduling and workshop management. Both do their respective parts well, and together have the ability to take your business to the highest level.
This article hasn’t mentioned all the features Velodrop has, nor has it discussed all the ways Velodrop can work together with Lightspeed to improve your workflow. We’ll write some future posts on that soon. Hope you’ll stay tuned!