Nine names on tomorrow’s booking list and you recognise two of them. That Danish couple who rent e-bikes every August and the local family mad about mountain biking.
These are the customers you love. They spend money, show up happy, know what they want and say nice things about you on Google and TripAdvisor.
You’ll greet them with a big smile and thank them for coming back. But the other seven names? Some of them may have rented from you before but you just don’t know.
And if one of them asks if you remember them from last summer, all you can do is smile and check them as you would anyone else. This is not how you imagined the welcome returning customers would get before you set up the business.
Why Returning Customers Create the Same Workload As New Ones
In every rental business we’ve been in, looking after the customer is a big thing. We know it’s something you really want to do well at.
You may actually already have the information you need to recognise a repeat customer…the problem is finding it. It could be in a waiver from last August sitting in the filing cabinet, buried in an email thread, or on the Excel spreadsheet you keep booking records on.
No-one has dropped the ball here. It’s not that you or the staff should keep more notes.
It’s just the systems you use at the minute aren’t connected and each has its own limitations. Like your spreadsheet, for example. Matching a name on tomorrow’s booking list against hundreds of past rentals takes too long if six people are waiting at the counter.
Bookings, checking availability and day-to-day operations are much harder than they need to be. If that sounds familiar beyond just the counter, we cover the bigger picture in When Bike Rental Operations Start to Feel Unnecessarily Complicated.
Until there’s one system that brings up each customer’s previous bookings when they check in, your team will keep re-entering details they’ve already collected.
The shops that have solved this aren’t doing more admin. They’re working from one customer record that connects every past booking, so recognition happens at check-in without anyone having to look it up.
What That Lost Recognition Costs You
Counter time is the obvious cost. It takes you ten to fifteen minutes to process your returning customers.
Get eight of them over a weekend and that’s two hours of team time spent. If your system knew they were returners and you had all the records you needed, you could turn them around in five, or even faster.
Next is disappointment. Customers like to feel important and that they matter.
If they dropped £200 or more on their last rental with you, they’re hoping for a ‘Hi! Great to see you again’. If you don’t give them that, there’s no shortage of other rental shops nearby that might make them feel more welcome.
It also has a knock-on impact on new customers. You need to keep their wait to an absolute minimum or it’s going to be tough turning them into your next returner.
Not to mention the phone bookings that go to voicemail while everyone’s tied up at the counter. They’ll just pick the next one on Google Maps.
Counter queues aren’t just a check-in issue. If your bikes aren’t prepped and ready when customers arrive, that adds to the wait as well. We cover ways to manage this better in our article, How Good Rental Shops Know Exactly Which Bikes to Prepare Every Day.
While every returning customer goes through the same check-in as a first timer, you’re losing time you could save and goodwill you’ve already earned. That only changes when your check-in system knows how to spot existing customers.
How You Change This to Something Better
You already have a customer list, booking records, contact details. The problem has never been the information itself. It’s spread across too many places for your team to use it when it matters.
That changes when you bring everything into one system.
Instead of cross-checking a spreadsheet, a booking calendar and a filing cabinet, your team has a single view of each customer. That includes their name, what they’ve rented before and how they had it set up.
That’s what bike.rent Manager gives you.
A returning customer books online or walks in, and their record shows your team member their name, preferences, past rentals, waiver on file and more. Your team sees it before the customer reaches the counter.
A Faster Check-In for The Customers You’ve Already Earned
Now, check-in takes two minutes and not ten. Every returning customer gets a smile and a personal greeting. Your team member picks out their bike straight away and sends them happily on their way.
There’s no time spent re-entering details or digging through old emails or spreadsheets.
It works just the same whether they booked through your website, came via a tour operator or just walked in off the street. One customer record, connected across every channel.
When they hand their bike back, the system starts working on getting them to return. Follow-up emails, seasonal reminders and booking prompts go out automatically through the Mailchimp integration, without anyone on your team sending a single message.
You and your staff care about repeat customers. Now the system makes it easy to prove it.
If your business also runs tours or operates across multiple locations, keeping that customer record consistent is even more important but gets a lot more complicated. Check out how you can run several services from the same system in One Platform for Bikes, Skis, Tours, Locations and All Your Workflows.
See How It Works for Your Business
Find out how Bike Rental Manager manages customer records, automates follow-up, and helps rental businesses turn one-time renters into regulars.
