AI-Driven Customer Engagement
Join Dave Weiner, the CEO of Priority Bicycles, as he shares the company's journey of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance Customer Experience (CX). Through a rich narrative, Dave delves into how Priority Bicycles leverages various communication channels to maintain a seamless interaction with customers. This session also explores how AI aids in providing professional and timely responses, thus enhancing the overall customer satisfaction and engagement. The emphasis on maintaining a human touch in digital interactions provides insights into balancing automation and personalized customer service.
(upbeat music)
- And welcome to our next session
with Dave Wiener for Priority Bicycles.
Dave, how are you doing?
- I'm great, Ryan.
Thanks for having me.
- Oh, of course.
So, first of all, let's start off.
We're just gonna go right into it.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, Dave.
How you got into being the CEO of Priority Bicycles
and the founder, and we'll start there.
- Sure.
So, Priority Bicycles is nine years old.
We started back in 2014, mid-2014,
with the idea of maintenance-free bicycles.
So, I grew up in the bike industry
and then worked in software for a number of years.
And when I left software, I had this,
you know, this period when I was in software
where I wasn't working with bikes and I missed it.
I wanted to get back into bicycles.
Yet, I felt that the bicycle industry was really
going up market so fast.
It's all about carbon fiber and dual suspension
and going as fast as we could.
And so, I started to think,
with my time away from bicycles,
how could we make better bicycles
and really for the people that I was riding with
that was just looking to ride on the weekends
and have fun on their bike.
And so, we came up with this idea of maintenance-free
bicycles and low maintenance bicycles
and how to make the most reliable bike
that you could ever buy.
And living in New York and commuting to work a lot,
I really want to look at the segments of commuting
and of recreational cycling.
And so, really, that's where we've been.
All of our bicycles are assigned to be
the most low-maintenance in category.
We sell consumer direct online,
either at our website and we have a co-braded website
with Costco.
So, it's the only two places to buy our bikes.
And all of our bicycles are, you know,
again, meant to be low maintenance.
- So, if I were to ask you,
so all of the consumers and your customers
are buying online,
there's no sort of physical store right now
that they see the bicycle before they buy.
- We do have a handful of stores in the country,
but not like-
- Okay.
- Yeah, okay.
- The vast majority of our business is online.
- Okay.
- We like having the one-on-one relationship
with our customer.
That's really important for us.
- And where does that, well, actually,
I'll take that question in maybe a couple minutes here,
but let me first start with what was kind of like
an interesting point for me that I wanted to make
and get your thoughts on,
but if you go to prioritybicycles.com
and you go to their contact us page,
and I have it up next to me right now.
So, 100% customer satisfaction, 365 days a year
that you can contact them.
They have an in-house support team.
I see a, you can attach a file, include a note.
They bring up their contact information with a calling,
WhatsApp, I see you can schedule time with them,
virtual showroom, the list goes on and on.
So, I guess what at the point I'm trying to make here
is that from this page,
it sounds like customer support is extremely important
to your business.
Maybe by questions, like, walk me through that.
Has it been like this since day one of the business
or has it evolved?
- Yeah, it has most certainly been there since day one.
Nine years ago when we started buying bicycle online
was still not really common,
and it's getting more popular,
but bicycles were one of the last things
to really go to online.
And certainly a lot of people are still buying
a bicycle and store,
and I grew up working in bike shops,
and I know how to give customer service
the way we gave it in the bike shop in the 80s and 90s.
So, to me, if we were gonna bring our bikes to market
and bring them, price we wanted to go online
was really important.
Yet, how do we give that customer experience
that you get in a store to a customer?
Well, the first thing it starts with
is being available 365 days a year.
We're on from nine a.m. to 10 p.m.
365 days a year, we are not yet 24/7,
but I would actually like this to be.
So, to me, I feel that we win customers
by responding to their questions really quickly
and with really knowledgeable sales team
that can help support any questions
that customers can have.
And then, when a customer gets a bike,
they often have questions,
and again, we win the customer by responding quickly
with the knowledgeable response.
And so, it's always been there since the beginning
that we will do customer service that much.
Nine years ago, I was doing a lot of nights and weekends,
unfortunately, not anymore,
but having really knowledgeable staff
that can get back to our customers very quickly
on whatever mode of communication they want
is very important to us.
How do you or your team kind of, I would say, like, train?
Or like, how do they understand how to answer the questions?
Is there any sort of, again, training that happens beforehand
before they start taking questions from the customers?
We've never hired somebody to date
that hasn't worked in a bike shop
or have really on the ground bicycle experience.
So, it is important to us that our support team members
all really know a whole lot about bikes,
and for really most of them,
almost everybody rides a bike every day
and has bicycles as part of their life
and has worked with bicycles in some way, shape, or form.
Not that we won't hire someone that hasn't,
but they need to have a lot of tribal knowledge on cycling
and know the ins and outs of riding a bike every day,
because that's what we expect them to help our customers with.
Yeah.
Has the channels shifted at all?
And let me kind of clarify that.
Again, you've been around for nine years.
Have you seen any increases or decreases
from people contacting you versus phone, rather than chat,
or, you know, email versus WhatsApp?
Anything that kind of pays attention?
WhatsApp is the wildcard that has really grown a lot for us.
As we receive a lot more communication via WhatsApp
that I would ever expect.
You know, and I say that when we started with SMS,
that was more popular than I thought it would be,
but then putting on WhatsApp, I thought,
would be a percentage of our SMS, and it's actually more.
And I think one of the reasons for that is a lot of times
customers want us to see something on their bike
or hear something on their bike.
And if you think, if you want to take a 20-second video on your phone
or maybe even a three-minute video on your phone,
and need to send it to a support person,
how do you do that?
And I know for me, I have to take the video,
transfer it to my phone, upload it, right?
Right.
Send them a Dropbox link, whatever it is.
So people really like WhatsApp because they can send us big videos.
And so we get a lot of that.
And people love it.
And even, you know, often, in a lot of our shortcuts,
like, "Hey, can you send me a video of that?"
The best way to do that is via WhatsApp.
People just get that.
Interesting.
And so we get a lot of communication on WhatsApp,
especially for things technical.
But we also get a lot of international customers on WhatsApp.
Americans still like to email a lot.
A lot of our international customers like to use WhatsApp.
It's just a more fluid form of communication.
So you ship internationally, then?
We do.
Yeah.
Not a ton, but certainly products every day.
And has it always been like that since you started the company
or has that grown that international kind of thing?
Yeah, it's almost been there.
Our bikes are unique in what we offer.
And so you can't necessarily find a similar model anywhere else.
And so when we started, we really wanted to focus on the North American market
because we thought that was where we were going to grow.
And certainly we do.
But customers kept asking to buy our bikes internationally.
And so eventually we realized that if we didn't ship them,
at least we couldn't answer the question.
So it is expensive to ship our bikes internationally.
We sell bikes every day.
Okay.
So is there anything else I'm missing in kind of the formula of like customer
experience
for priority bicycles?
So what I think the audience and I have heard so far is that you respond rather
quickly.
It's really important to get to them.
It seems like it's across all different channels, whatever the consumer prefers
And it's also being really knowledgeable to answer pretty much any question,
that kind of comes to your team.
If I'm missing anything else, or are those to the three variables that you kind
of focus on?
I would also add on top of that that we make a customer happy no matter what it
takes.
Okay.
So we believe being an online store only as good as our last review.
And our last review is happening today, right?
So we do go above and beyond to make our customer super happy.
That's responding quickly with a knowledgeable answer.
And then ultimately making them happy even if sometimes that happens.
And is that like, is that review?
I guess let me kind of step back.
I feel like there's some CEOs that are like, we got to get more reviews.
And they kind of like craft their business.
And like they're, it's like, okay, here's how we're going to get more reviews.
And it sounds like a few, it's just like, it's kind of the after effect of
everything that
you do.
It's not like we have to get more reviews, but that's just kind of what comes
of it.
It's a byproduct of basically the customer experience.
Yeah, we don't ever ask for reviews when you buy a product in x weeks, you get
an email
it says, we don't really see if you send a review, but that's it.
We never ask for anything beyond that.
That said, if you give a customer a bad x most customers, they don't sit at
their phone
and they're saying, I love this product.
No, it happens is they dislike your product for some reason or another.
And then the first place they go is to be the loud person on it.
Right.
So we just want to prevent that.
So we're not asking for reviews.
We're just trying to make sure that if somebody has inclination to write a
review, it's a good one.
Yeah, that's great point.
So let me kind of take the next step in this conversation about data
specifically that
the data that you're collecting.
And again, as CEO, you probably have one perspective on this and that's kind of
what I want to get into.
But how important is throughout the customer experience as you're learning
about the customer to actually
collect more and more learnings about that customer for future communications.
It's really important.
And that's why our support system needs to run across all the different
channels a customer can talk to us on and bring that information into one place
We always say we have a 360 degree view of customer.
So no matter how our customer contacts us, we can quickly see what they've
bought from us when they bought it.
And all the communication we have had, if we don't know that particular
customer, don't know what he or she has and don't know what questions they've
asked in the past, we can't respond to it intelligently.
Right. So having all that information is really important to us and across
multi-champ.
And I assume to, again, this is an assumption, maybe I'm wrong here, but, you
know, the lifespan of a bicycle is several years.
And so that's something that you have data on that first time that they came to
you that you purchased.
But they're probably coming back to you with questions as you talked about
maintenance.
So that's all data too that you have the understanding of the customer from the
first time that they came and purchased the bicycle, correct?
That's right.
We have customers emailing in about their nine-year-old bikes all the time.
And so how, like, can you tell me just other ways that you utilize that data
outside of like, okay, we know that this problem exists because it came five
years ago.
Are there other use cases?
We do do a good job, especially on new products of tagging different cases with
different bikes with different either requests or issues or anything we need to
know about that product.
We always say that, you know, a lot of our bikes, one of them we've been
running for nine years, if you look at the photo of the bike that we sell today
that we had nine years ago, you'd see it looks identical.
It's not.
A lot of little things have changed on that bike over the years.
How do we do that?
Well, we hear from our customers what they want, what could last longer, what
could do a better job of being the ultimate low maintenance bike.
And we make those changes.
So our products are constantly evolving.
And the way we do that is we listen to our customer.
We listen to the feedback they have on how it arrived, you know, from shipping
is shipping a problem.
You know, if maybe a boat rusted that shouldn't have rust, we need to tag all
that information so that next time we're in production of that product, we make
it better.
One last question I ask you on this, like I talked to technology companies and
obviously I work for a technology company.
And there's this line that gets repeated and repeated over, which is that like
you got to focus on the retention and the customer because that will create
super fans, which then is like a cycle and help you create even more customers.
And I feel as I'm listening to you, you're living in that and you've built a
business around it.
My question is, has that always, like, has that been the thought process since
day one, like we will generate new customers if we just create a great
experience and really focus on current customers?
Or is that just kind of been, you know, just something that just happened and
it wasn't really a focus?
I think everything you're saying is true.
It's not how we think.
We just feel like make every customer happy and the rest will follow.
So if we make everybody happy, then, you know, unfortunately with the bike,
there's not a lot of repeat business.
Unless somebody's got a family of five, they don't need five bikes.
People buy bikes for themselves and if the bikes do a good job, they'll last a
long time.
So yes, maybe in many years down the road, the bike isn't worn out, but they
decide they want to upgrade or launch something lighter, faster, whatever it is
They're going to think about us because we give them great experience.
I do think a lot of what happens is that consumers these days are so trained to
have a poor experience that if you give them a great experience that they talk
about it, right?
They're at the water core at work and they say, "You know, about this bike."
And it arrives in the scratch and I emailed the customer, right?
I'm sorry, I emailed the company, I texted them, and they responded right back
and they were helpful.
And, you know, I think people are surprised when you give good service.
And I do think they like to talk about that because good service is so rare.
But that's not why we do it. We do it because it's the right thing and that we
believe if we take good care of every customer, they will take good care of us.
You think it sounds so simple, Dave?
So let me talk about the subject that most people are here to listen to, which
is AI.
Have you started to infuse AI not just across customer experience but in your
business at all in the last six, twelve months?
Yeah, so the only place we use AI is, and we were using it, customer came out
with an add-on, which we can talk about, but we were using AI for all of us.
And AI for the same reasons that customer embedded it before customer embedded
it.
So a lot of our support team was using chat GBT to summarize what customers
were sending, especially because one of our customers can get really lengthy.
And then also helping craft our response.
You do need a lot of technical knowledge on how to respond for a bike problem
or a bike question sometimes.
But everybody we hire knows a lot about bikes.
They don't necessarily know a lot about writing great emails.
And they'll be the first to say that.
I think that what our team has liked is how AI can help us to respond in a very
professional way.
So with this being accurate statement that almost the use of chat GBT/AI
started almost from the ground up organically of just your team utilizing it
without even having a strategy around it.
It was just there. It was a tool. Hey, I'm going to start utilizing it.
Absolutely. That's exactly right.
So yeah, one of them started using it and told everybody else and how she was
using it and the rest is history. Right. Everyone realized, gosh, that helps
those emails sound great. You know, how do I do that and how is very easy.
So we have the first the first moment that I heard that we were using AI based
responses.
I was a little scared because it would lose what makes our team special. Yep.
But I quickly found some examples and just read that it just was helping them
speed up an intelligent response. It was already in their minds and that they
already put on paper just helped it sound a little more professional.
So is that the balance in your mind of like, okay, you want to speed up the
process here for your team members to make it a lot easier, but not at the
expense of hurting the brain and having generic responses, right? Like that's
the balance.
That's right. So we are not at the stage and nor do I plan on any time soon. No
, I'll not say forever. Having any type of AI automated responses.
It's really important that a professional that knows all about the product they
have your response.
That's who we are as a company. We don't want people reading responses from a
bot that wasn't edited by a person first.
Yeah, that's important to us because of the specialty nature of our product.
But when someone from our team can start with what they want to say and have AI
make it sound better, I think that's a good use of that's a good way to save
time and also have a really professional response to our customer.
Yeah, so I just want to dig deeper on that note because I want to ask you is
that like it sounds to me that there is this human element of it, no matter
what, like you can have the perfect response.
It could be well educated. You know, you can train the bot to know everything
about there is on priority bicycles.
But to you, there's still this variable that it needs to come across as a
person talking to another person at the end of the day. Do I have that right?
Yeah, you do. And you know, our support team is in New York City. It's people
that commute on bikes every day. We want that to remain with our customers.
And I have not seen, you know, we have tested AI in terms of, hey, I've got
this noise on my bike. I've got this question about my bike.
We have tested that a lot.
And I don't think we would ever say yes right now, but we have not been
satisfied with the answers. Right. It's not. And it's not. We are as company.
So I think that keeping humans at the forefront of our responses is really
important.
Yeah. I guess one takeaway for me that I hope the audience would see too is
that like there's, it sounds to me that there are principles that you have and
maybe as a brand or as a company that you start with.
And like the, the solutions still need to be centered around who you are as a
company rather than some of the solutions changing that around and maybe
changing the priority biases.
Do I never ask exactly that's exactly right.
So is there, is there anything else off the top of your mind? I know you got a
lot going on. But is there anything else that you might be excited about or
something you want to test out in the future or something that like, oh, maybe
I can help me with this part of the problem within your entire business?
We are changing a little bit of some of the parameters we are giving AI. And I
think that that has been kind of fun for us to see how the results change. And
I think that as, as we get better who we want, you know, I think we could write
a perfect job description for a person.
Now we need to write the perfect response positioning for for AI. And so I
think that's interesting.
I will see how over time, you know, we can have some questions responded to it.
The age old like I can't find my track number.
Sure, shoot that over. Right.
How do we, how do we figure out as a company, what can be responded to by AI
and what cannot. And that's a, that's a difficult question.
But I'm excited to see where that comes over time. And, you know, getting to
the point maybe where AI is fully responding, but we read it and edit it before
we send it.
Whereas today, and the AI that we've experimented with isn't there yet for our
particular niche industry. Today, as we write it and AI makes it sound better.
But, you know, can it get to that next level? I think so.
Yeah.
Not this month this year, but maybe this month next year, we'll see.
Well, it's definitely an interesting question as you know, the pace of
innovation here, but I really like it. I want just to stop again just to say
that I think it's really insightful that I think it's really insightful that I
think it's really exciting. I think it's really insightful that you're starting with your principles of who
you are as a company, how you interact, and then utilizing some tools like this
to improve upon that rather than focusing on the tools first, those type of
solutions that are coming out and seeing how you can integrate it.
I love that response.
Maybe just last thing.
Anything in terms of data being collected, I want to just go back to this
because I feel like when it comes to your product.
Now, I know you've said just before, like you have had one bicycle that you've
been selling since nine years.
Are you utilizing any of the customer data learnings to build upon like future
products? Are you doing that at all?
Or product discovery, new bicycles are just kind of in-house?
Not utilizing AI for that yet.
And that would be really interesting. We do all of our new products come from
customer suggestion.
We found early on in the company that if we design the bikes that I think is
great, they don't sell.
Whereas if we listen to our customers, because our customers, they come to us
and say, I love this and that.
And what if you did this, our customers, if you stop and listen to them in our
business, they tell you exactly where you need to go next.
And so listening to our customers is where some of our best products come from.
And so listening heavier on that, and if there's finding a way to have AI read
all of our customer inbound and help us with that,
and COA that data would be an awesome thing for us.
Yeah. Well, you've got something going. So Dave, I really appreciate the time.
Thank you for talking to us about your story, about priority bicycles, and how
you envision customer experience in the future and utilizing AI.
We love customer and love what it does to help our team respond to our
customers quickly and efficiently and beautifully.
So it's my honor to be here and thanks for having me.
Thanks Dave.
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