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BRAND SPOTLIGHT: woom Bikes
On a Mission to Make Millions of Children Fall in Love with Riding a Bike
By Execs In The Know
In a recent conversation with April Obersteller, Vice President of Global Experience: EX + CX at woom, she shared how the brand approaches employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX), its strategy for connecting with customers, and the “Magic Moments” that set children up for a lifetime of happy cycling.
woom specializes in designing and manufacturing high-quality bicycles for children. Their eye-catching designs, innovative features, commitment to safety, and boundless fun factor create an experience that is second to none. The brand was founded by two dads in a garage in Vienna, Austria in 2013 and has since expanded to over 25 countries around the world.
With just 1,400 bikes sold in the first year on U.S. soil, that number skyrocketed to more than 52,000 bikes in 2022. And that number just keeps on growing! In March, the brand celebrated 10 years of “Magic Moments” and has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in America.
Execs In The Know: How would you describe woom’s culture, values, and overall mission when it comes to serving customers?
April Obersteller: Our mission to is make millions of children fall in love with riding a bike . . . and make the world a better place. While everyone has a different role in making our mission possible, we all strive to bring our values of Joy, Courage, and Responsibility into every action that we do. How this plays out is what our culture is made of. The customer is in the DNA of our founders and the center of our WHY. We believe in what we are trying to do and while we don’t hit the mark perfectly, we always try and come back to this WHY.
EITK: What does a common customer success engagement look like, and on which channels are you and your team serving customers?
April: We are big fans of using the tool of LAMA: Listen, Acknowledge, Make a Statement, and Ask a Question. While all the touchpoints of this engagement are important, I think the first two are critical. Magic moments are also something we strive to hold space for and create during engagements with our customers. We are so lucky to be on the receiving end of our customers sharing their magic moment with their woom bike, and we love it when we get to also create that within our interactions with them.
We are currently engaging with our customers through phone, email, chat, social, video consulting, and in person at our showroom or at one of our many community events.
EITK: What’s a magic moment at woom that has resonated with you?
April: I love this question! A magic moment that resonates with me happened about a year ago. It was right around Father’s Day when a customer reached out to us with a beautiful email. He had lost his daughter and when he was finally able to look through photos of her, he realized that so many moments of happiness captured had a woom in the background.
He told us how woom was part of his daughter’s most joyous moments. The father also shared her values, and two out of the three values that he shared aligned with our company values. I love that we get to be part of these moments and that we are aligned with the people we are serving. I always get teared up thinking about this story, and I feel so lucky and honored to have this opportunity.
EITK: Where will the brand be focusing its efforts most in the next 6–12 months?
April: While there are many on the list, our biggest focus is getting to know our customers more and continuing to bring those insights back to our teams. Every day our woomsters are asking what we are doing well at and what things we need to work on for our customers. This is something so special when it comes to woom, each one of them does care. It is our responsibility to make sure that when we learn about a friction point that we don’t let it just stay with our team.
EITK: When it comes to technology, in what ways is the brand differentiating itself from its competitors to improve CX?
April: When it comes to technology or accessibility, that’s where we’re just having some fun with it. Our video consulting from a service side with our bikes is very popular. As you may know, some bike shops are known to be intimidating if you are not familiar with cycling. Additionally, we only sell direct-to-consumer right now, and this is one way we meet them where they are. Whenever they have a question about their bike, we’re able to serve those customers in real-time vs. telling them to take their bike to a shop.
Our number one goal is to show up for them in an accessible way. The technology we have is great, but we are continuing to get more sophisticated. We haven’t explored all the beautiful capabilities artificial intelligence (AI) and text analytics have to offer, yet. It’s certainly on the roadmap but there are some other priorities that we’ll be diving into first.
EITK: Which CX trend or technology are you most intrigued by at the moment, and what’s something you think every CX leader should be tracking?
April: We are at the stage of start-up to scale up and we are a global organization. One of the challenges at this stage is continuing to stay close to the customer at all stages of the journey, even as we scale. I am always interested in ways how to accomplish this, and I don’t think it is just one trend or one piece of technology but rather a multi-connection solution.
For example, invest in voice of the customer (VOC) technology AND invite our customers to join a team meeting and share their feedback directly with our organization. With that being said, I think something every CX leader should be tracking is how in touch the full organization is with the customer. This can be as simple as asking each function, “How well do you know our customers and what can I do to help close any gaps?” From that point, track that progress and impact.
EITK: Keeping employees happy and engaged is tricky. What are some of the things woom does to keep ESAT scores where they need to be among CX support staff and frontline agents?
April: At woom, we combined CX + EX at the core of our organizational structure and I have the honor of serving these teams. Not only do we look at the entire journey for both of our customers – external and internal – we are constantly looking at the connection points between the two. These insights and connections are looked at for the full organization. Every learning we gain is matched with an action that is integrated with strategy and ownership.
EITK: When you look back over the past 12 months, which success has meant the most to you?
April: Our organization has been through a lot of change over the last year and we will continue to say YES to this ride, even with the bumps and turns. I think one of the biggest successes is how we are each still committed to sharing feedback and doing something with this feedback. The participation rate for our annual Engagement Survey increased from last year and we have matched actions and communication to the valuable insights we were given. We have also made immense progress in how we are listening to our external customers by launching our post-purchase survey for the EU with plans this year to continue adding ways our customers can talk to us.
EITK: Can you share what your involvement in the Execs In The Community community has meant to you thus far?
April: Community is everything. Getting to be surrounded by leaders who are in the CX world because of their relentless pursuit of service and magic moments is beyond helpful, especially to know you are not alone in this journey. Not only do we have the commonality of our WHY, but we also get to be on the receiving end of learning all the different strategies and initiatives that we are working on. This allows us to bring each one of those learnings into our CX organizations and get stronger for our customers and our team members. The generosity of this community is endless.
Vice President of Global Experience: EX + CX
Execs In The Know partners with brands that are providing outstanding customer service (CX) experiences. The Brand Spotlight Series showcases innovations and solutions to CX challenges faced by today’s leading brands.
Thank you to April Obersteller and the entire team at woom for contributing to the Execs In The Know Brand Spotlight.
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