How Swapfiets’ Support Team Keeps Members Cycling with Aircall

Swapfiets is the world’s first bicycle subscription service, currently operating in eight countries across Europe. With a mission to create more liveable cities, the company offers a range of bikes to suit all needs—with two types of pedal bikes and two types of advanced e-bikes, all designed for durability. Swapfiets bikes are easily recognised by their iconic blue front tyre.

To keep those wheels turning, Swapfiets provides rapid servicing for members, using standardised parts that can be quickly replaced, along with a guarantee to swap the bike for a new one if it can’t be fixed quickly enough. Taking their sustainability credentials even further, Swapfiets aims to achieve a 100% circular bike model by 2025—and is already reusing and recycling as many parts as possible.

Ensuring every cyclist enjoys a smooth experience is vital for Swapfiets, and to support its growing member base, the team has over 100 agents providing support every day of the week in six languages. We recently spoke with Project Manager Christoph Eilers to find out how Swapfiets is using Aircall to build a high-performing support team and deliver a seamless experience for members.

Upgrading an Outdated PBX System

When Chris was first brought in to improve the customer service infrastructure, Swapfiets was relying on a legacy PBX system to handle support calls. As he reviewed the existing system and the volume of calls, he quickly realised that the technology was outdated and costly compared to more modern solutions. It also lacked the innovative features needed to meet customer expectations, was difficult to manage, and suffered from poor call quality—none of which helps deliver excellent customer service!

This prompted Chris to look for a new calling solution that could quickly adapt to the support team’s needs and help them efficiently handle the 7,000-10,000 calls they receive each week.

“Our callers usually have an urgent issue—they’re outside, with a bike, and need help. Generally, they don’t want to send an email and wait for a reply. We needed a call solution that would let us respond quickly and get those riders back on the road,” Chris explains.

Having used Aircall in a previous role, Chris immediately thought of the phone and communication platform, knowing it offered a robust, intuitive, and feature-rich solution—one that would enable agents to deliver a great customer experience and allow managers to easily monitor performance. In addition to Aircall’s extensive toolset, Chris wanted a solution that offered autonomy and didn’t require specialist help to use. Swapfiets’ old system was poorly understood by staff and difficult to update. This meant the team lacked agility, and making changes—whether to office hours or onboarding new agents—was a hassle.

“One of the biggest benefits of Aircall is how easy it is to use. With our old PBX system, we needed professional help every time we wanted to change our call flows or create new numbers. With Aircall, we can make those changes ourselves in just a few clicks. It means we can keep improving and scaling our service without any friction,” Chris says.

While Aircall gives teams control over their call solution, during the initial onboarding Swapfiets also felt fully supported by their dedicated implementation specialist, David. David was on hand to ensure the initial launch of Aircall went smoothly and to quickly connect Chris and the team with the answers they needed.

“I have to give a special mention to David—he was fantastic, extremely knowledgeable, and one of the best onboarding specialists I’ve ever worked with.”

Gaining Deep Customer Insights with Analytics+

Alongside the fast and seamless setup Aircall provides, Chris’ team has been benefiting from Aircall’s powerful Analytics+ features, which provide a bird’s-eye view of team performance.

With Aircall’s analytics and dashboards, Chris and Swapfiets managers can dive into the data, seeing an overview of call activity, specific trends, detailed graphs, information on missed calls, and much more. Everything is also logged and documented automatically, giving them a reliable record of previous interactions.

With these insights at their fingertips, Swapfiets’ customer support leaders can make informed decisions about how to grow and improve their service. Meanwhile, top performers in their sales and support teams can be recognised and celebrated—boosting team morale in the process.

“With Analytics+ and Aircall’s Activity Feed, we can see what’s happening and improve what we’re doing. In fact, using Aircall’s analytics, we were able to spot a drop in answered calls during lunch hours. With that information, we quickly adjusted our shift pattern to meet the spike in demand. We’ve even used Aircall tagging data to inform our product—adding new features to the app based on common call queries. It’s helping us build a better service and a better experience for our members.”

As Chris and the team focus on using best-in-class tools to deliver an outstanding experience to members, they’ve also started using HubSpot as their service and marketing platform. The tool’s close integration with Aircall is already making the support team even more efficient. With the integration, they can easily log calls alongside specific contacts and tickets in HubSpot—keeping all their information in one place.

Building a Truly Personalised Experience

By using Aircall and HubSpot, Swapfiets has been able to start collecting crucial data that helps them improve key KPIs including First Call Resolution. However, as well as providing those essential numbers, Aircall also helps support agents deliver a personalised experience that members will remember. And with a young customer base and a friendly brand, being able to deliver those interactions with empathy and meaning has been crucial.

Fortunately, with Aircall’s pop-up Insight Cards, teams can do just that, helping agents instantly see who is calling (including whether they are a member, a prospect, or a colleague) along with useful context to anticipate their needs. With the ability to add notes to calls and tickets, agents can also share helpful information about contacts with each other. This way, they can help immediately—a win-win that gives agents a greater sense of achievement and keeps callers happy.

Taking personalisation a step further, Swapfiets has even created a custom Interactive Voice Response (IVR) flow with recordings from its own agents. When it comes to the hold music, callers will also enjoy a unique track, created by one of Swapfiets’ own talented employees—chosen through a “beat challenge” organised by the project team (talk about getting buy-in from the start!).

“Having the team record the IVRs and running a competition to see who could produce a track for our hold music was a great way to add that extra personal touch, and bring a sense of fun, creativity, and engagement into our work,” Chris comments.

Bringing Bikes—and Smiles—to More Members

Looking ahead, Chris will be exploring how to make the most of Aircall, with new features such as AI-powered call and voicemail transcription which can offer greater transparency over customer interactions and further insights to improve their service.

As Chris and the Swapfiets team continue to grow and bring more bikes to members around the world, Aircall will be right alongside—ready to help with every interaction along the way.

Ready to transform your approach to customer support? Try Aircall today.