BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
CykelOS is providing its software free of charge.
“From day one our intention has always been to help the bike industry, especially to help the brick and mortar retailer to be competitive and stay relevant,” said co-founder Kristen Britz.
“Given the current situation with the virus and business pressures that exist, we thought we would offer both our rental and workshop solutions free of charge for the next six months. In particular, it will help bike shops to continue their workshop business at a distance from the customer during any current or further potential shut down.
“They can get more bookings for rentals or workshop without having to touch customers. It includes things like taking bookings online, communicating with the customer and integration with LightSpeed and SmartEtailing.”
Co-founders Britz and David Book have been working on an update to CykelOS which allows the shops to send a notification via email to their customers that their service is complete, and now this notification includes a payment link for the customer to make payment prior to collecting their bike.
The only difference between the free and paid software will be a cap on the number of SMS notifications that can be sent out via the free software, CykelOS has said. This is because each SMS incurs a fee that CykelOS pays, usually offset against its monthly software subscription fee.
For those shops that require the need for the SMS features, they can sign up for the full-featured solution or the ‘Texting in Lightspeed’ solution at www.textem.co and apply discount code ‘COVID20’ to get 20% off.
CykelOS serves bike shops throughout the USA, Canada, UK. Australia and New Zealand.
