By business type
Fit, servicing and parts questions a bike shop gets every day
A bike shop answers the same four questions all week: what size frame am I, how long is the wait for a service, does this part fit my bike, and is this covered. Three of those are answerable from what the shop already publishes. The fourth, and anything that starts with a noise or a crack, is where the workshop has to take over, because bicycles have parts that fail dangerously.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- what size frame do i need
- i am 5 foot 9 what size should i get
- how long is the wait for a service
- how much is a full service
- will this cassette fit my bike
- do you do cycle to work
- is the frame warranty transferable
- can you fix a buckled wheel
- do you sell ex demo bikes
- can i book a bike fit
- my brakes are making a noise
- do you service electric bikes
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Frame size charts by model and rider height | Published sizing per model with the height ranges and, where you have them, the reach and stack figures. Geometry differs enough between models that a rider is not one size across a range, and saying so up front prevents an ordered bike going back. |
|---|---|
| Your service menu and what each tier includes | What a basic service covers, what a full service covers, what is extra, what a gearbox or suspension service costs, and where parts sit on top of labour. Customers compare shops on this and most shops publish only the headline price. |
| Current workshop turnaround | How far out you are booking, whether you take drop-ins for small jobs, and how the wait changes in spring. This is the most asked and fastest moving figure in the shop, so it belongs on a page you update rather than in a document you upload. |
| Standards and compatibility reference | Bottom bracket standards, axle spacing, freehub types, brake mount types, speed counts and what you will and will not mix. This is the material behind every does this fit question, and it is a set of facts rather than a judgement. |
| Warranty terms split by frame and components | Frame cover, which is often long and sometimes transferable, versus component cover, which usually comes from the component maker and runs on a different clock. These get merged in customers' minds and the distinction decides who handles a claim. |
| Purchase scheme rules | Which cycle to work style schemes you accept, the voucher limits, what happens if the bike costs more than the certificate, whether accessories are included and how long a voucher takes to arrive. This is procedural, it is asked constantly, and it is almost never written down clearly. |
What has to reach a person
Anything safety critical
A noise from a headset, a crack in a frame or a carbon component, a brake that has gone soft, a wheel that has developed a wobble. Some of these are trivial and some of them fail catastrophically, and nothing in a typed sentence distinguishes them.
The assistant should say it cannot judge this, ask the rider not to ride it until it has been looked at, and give the workshop route. That is a stronger reply than anything it could construct from a maintenance page.
Whether a specific part fits a specific bike
It can state the standards a part uses. It cannot know what the customer's bike actually has, because the answer depends on model year, on what a previous owner changed, and on things only visible with the wheel out.
Give the specification and offer to have somebody check, ideally with the bike in the shop. A wrongly sold component is a return, a refit and a lost afternoon in the workshop.
Frame size for a particular rider
Height alone gets somebody into the right region and no further. Inside leg, reach, flexibility, riding style and what they are coming from all move the answer, which is why bike fits exist. Quote the chart, then offer the fit.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot judge anything mechanical from a description, and if it involves brakes, steering, a fork or a frame please do not ride it until we have seen it. I can help with frame sizing charts, what each service includes, current workshop waiting times, warranty terms and the cycle to work process.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
A bicycle is a safety product and advice about it is too
Telling somebody a noise is probably nothing is different from telling them a sofa fabric will be fine. Brake, steering, fork and frame failures injure people, and advice given in the shop's name is the shop's advice.
Keep the indexed maintenance material descriptive rather than diagnostic, and set the caution level so the assistant refuses on a weak match instead of reaching for the nearest article.
Frame and component warranties run on different clocks
A long frame warranty commonly comes from the bike brand and is sometimes limited to the original owner, while the groupset, wheels and suspension carry the component maker's own terms and often a shorter period. Consumer guarantee rules in most markets sit underneath both and give the buyer a claim against the seller regardless.
Index the three separately. Merging them produces an assistant that promises a decade of cover on a rear derailleur.
Electric bikes bring extra rules
Where you trade there are usually limits on motor power and assisted speed for a cycle to be treated as a bicycle rather than something requiring registration or a licence, and battery transport and disposal carry their own restrictions. Anything the assistant says about modifying or derestricting a bike should be a flat refusal rather than an explanation.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Whether a described noise, crack or fault is safe to ride on.
- How to carry out a repair on brakes, forks, steering or a frame.
- Whether a specific component will fit a customer's bike.
- A definite frame size for a rider from their height alone.
- How to derestrict or modify an electric bike.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a bike shop rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Everything that happens before a workshop slot is agreedIt cannot take a slot. It can answer the four questions that come before one and hand over an enquiry ready to schedule.
- Frame cover, component cover and the parts designed to wear outFrames and wearing parts run on different clocks, and a worn chain is not a fault. What can be stated without seeing the bike.
- Standards the shop can state, on a bike it cannot seeFreehub bodies, axle standards and shell widths are facts. What a previous owner changed is not, and that decides it.
- Size charts, geometry and the gap a bike fit closesHeight puts a rider in a band and no further. Reach and stack move it, which is why a bike fit exists as a service.
- Stop riding it: the handover that begins with an instructionThe first line of the reply is an instruction to stop riding. The handover comes second, because a soft brake will not wait for email.
- Stock in a bike shop is a grid, and size is the axis that mattersHaving the bike is not having it in the size that fits. Floor stock, allocation from the brand, and why a restock is a season not a date.
- The shop can quote a named job and not the repair it turns intoBike tickets and a workshop labour menu are both quotable exactly. A repair is not, until the bike is on a stand and stripped.
- What an estimate can honestly bound on a machine still assembledThe deciding facts sit behind parts that have to come off first. What an estimate can bound, the inspection charge, the uneconomic repair.
- The delivery date and the collection date are different datesA bike arriving is not a bike being ready. Allocation seasons, the workshop build queue, and the lead time that became a promise.
- Boxed, built, or ridden out of the doorBoxed or built, and the battery that is restricted freight. Plus the collection that fails because a bike will not go in a small car.
- A ridden bike is a used bike, and that is the whole conversationRidden once makes it a used bike, so a size swap is really a resale. Helmets, fitted parts, and a scheme bike nobody owns yet.
- Money that has already been spent on somebody else's behalfRarely a card reversal. Usually a deposit against an order already placed, labour already carried out, or money that came from a scheme.
- Two closing times, and the earlier one belongs to the workshopTwo sets of hours in one building. The counter closes later than the workshop takes bikes in. Winter hours and the weekday closure.
- The last few hundred metres, pushedMost people arrive on the thing they came about. Getting a bike through the door, walking a broken one in, and loading a car outside.
- Six years later, somebody needs the receipt they lostThe document usually wanted is proof of purchase for a frame claim years later. Plus job sheets, and scheme paperwork nobody receives.
- Sort the message first, because these two need opposite thingsTwo jobs arrive in one message. A theft needs a frame number and the police. Transit damage needs photographs and a claim the shop raises.
- Answer the hazard before answering the grievanceThe noise is still there, or the bill grew. The work was done to a machine that has been ridden since, so the evidence has moved.
- The part a rider points at is rarely the part making the noiseA frame carries sound, so the reported location is unreliable. Two lists: what may be described, and what is never answered in text.
Questions
- Can it book a service slot?
- It does not write into the workshop diary. What it does is answer the questions that come before booking, current turnaround, what each service includes and what it costs, and then take a name, an email and a message when somebody wants to book, which arrives with you as an enquiry.
- Is the compatibility question worth automating if it cannot conclude?
- Yes, because most of those conversations are really about learning what a standard is. An assistant that explains axle spacing or freehub types clearly saves a long counter conversation, and it still ends with the shop checking the actual bike, which is where it was always going to end.
- What should we index first?
- The service menu with current turnaround, the frame size charts, and the cycle to work process. Those three are asked every day, they are all things you already know, and none of them are written down anywhere a customer can find at ten at night.
Keep reading
- For a online storeDelivery cut-offs, the returns window and restock questions get asked before purchase. The one thing an assistant cannot do is find an order.
- For a fashion retailerFit is both the most asked pre-purchase question and the biggest cause of returns. Here is what a clothing retailer can safely automate.
- For a furniture retailerLead times, delivery access and assembly dominate furniture enquiries. What an assistant answers well, and where it must take a name.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.