Customer service is a great tool for building long-time relationships with bike shop customers.

But good customer service requires qualified and motivated people on staff, and this is not easy to achieve or maintain. Staff issues are frequently cited as one of the most vexing challenges for retail bike stores. Why? One reason is that it’s hard to recruit the talented people you need when offering the relatively low wages available in bike retail.

Bicycle mechanic salaries made the news earlier this month when Bicycle Retailer and Industry News reported on a blog post that had gone semi-viral (by bicycle industry standards anyway), with 197,000 views as of this writing.

Donny Perry, a global development manager at Specialized, posted a presentation in mid-February (http://www.slideshare.net/donnyperry/bike-mechanic-salaries) that called out the sub-standard average pay offered to bicycle mechanics.

He noted that the average bicycle mechanic earns just $22,337 per year (according…