The Challenge
Cyclinic is a Brisbane mountain bike suspension centre. It has been trading since 2004, and has focused on suspension retail and service since 2014, looking after forks and shocks from brands like FOX, RockShox, Cannondale, PUSH and Marzocchi.
Its customers are riders, many of them a long way from the workshop, who post suspension in for service and buy parts, tools and gear online. A service job isn’t like a normal order. A technician needs to know what is coming in, the customer needs a label to send it, and everyone needs to know where the parcel is. A standard shop checkout isn’t built for any of that, and a workshop can’t run on jobs that arrive without the information it needs.
The Approach
I started from the workshop, not the website: how a service job comes in, what a technician needs to know before a fork arrives, and what a customer needs to be told along the way.
A few decisions came out of that:
- No made-up appointments. Instead of time slots the workshop can’t always keep, customers see the workshop’s current turnaround, set by staff, before they book.
- Take the busywork away. Labels, emails and tracking updates happen without anyone at the workshop touching them.
- One business, one place. Booking sits inside the same store as the parts shop, rather than on a separate website, so servicing and retail feel like one business.
The Solution
A custom booking system built into the Cyclinic store, reachable from a “Book your service now” button on every page:
- Guided booking: riders step through their details and up to three forks or shocks on one booking, noting the brand, model and what’s wrong, so the technician knows what’s coming
- Prepaid return label, instantly: for postal bookings, a free Express label is created and emailed straight away, ready to print
- Confirmation emails: customers get a clear confirmation and the workshop gets its own notification
- Parcel tracking: the workshop keeps an eye on each parcel, and customers get an email when their suspension arrives. They can also check their booking status online or in their account
- Safe to click twice: a double-click can’t create two bookings or two labels, and if a label can’t be created the workshop is alerted and the booking is kept
- Open and closed, honestly: staff can pause bookings with a message. Riders can join a “tell me when you reopen” list and get an email when bookings resume
- A staff view: bookings, labels, delivery status, weekly numbers and the wording of the emails, all managed in one place
Alongside booking, I built tools that help riders before they commit:
- Service Estimator: pick a brand and model, see the service options and indicative prices
- Spring Calculator: enter rider weight, get a suggested spring
- Suspension Checker: a serial number and ID code lookup for RockShox and Fox, so a rider can identify exactly which fork or shock they have and find its manuals, upgrades and service documentation
I also customised the rest of the store to fit around the booking system and the tools.
The store itself also offers same-day dispatch on orders placed before 1pm, and multi-buy discounts on parts.
The Result
Servicing is something a rider can book from anywhere, at any hour, and the workshop doesn’t have to chase details, create labels or answer “where’s my parcel?”. Cyclinic used to run its bookings on a separate website. They now live inside the Shopify store, so there’s one system to look after instead of two.