The New Wheel TEST

A bike shop that leads with care

At The New Wheel, support isn’t just a department; it’s a company-wide philosophy.

Founded in San Francisco with a vision of transforming the e-bike experience, The New Wheel sets out to bring exceptional care to a traditionally transactional industry. For co-founders Brett Thurber and Karen Wiener, that meant treating every customer like a long-term partner, not a one-time buyer, and building a team culture rooted in fairness, transparency, and human connection.

From the very beginning, support played a central role in that mission.

“We wanted every customer to feel truly valued — like they were building a relationship, not just getting a product.”

Conversations, never tickets

The New Wheel became a Help Scout customer in 2016. Truth be told, they don’t even remember what they used before.

What they do remember is the motivation. They were looking for a support tool that felt invisible — no portals, no ticket numbers, just clear, personal conversations with real people that build trust over time. Help Scout was the clear choice.

“Help Scout doesn’t feel like software. It feels like talking to someone who’s genuinely here to help.”

Today, that invisible inbox still guides how they serve customers. Whether it’s a new e-bike buyer, a longtime rider needing a tune-up, or someone with a billing question, The New Wheel’s team handles every interaction with the same care, and Help Scout stays quietly in the background, making it all possible.

Everyone on the team, everyone in the queue

While many support solutions limit full product access to a single team, Help Scout does things differently, which allows The New Wheel to give its employees the access they need. With 24 teammates and a single phone number ringing across all locations, anyone might be the one helping a customer. It could be someone in sales answering a feature question or a service tech who just finished a repair with grease still on their hands.

Help Scout’s shared inbox makes that easy. All teammates have access to the queue and can see customer context, collaborate behind the scenes, and follow conversations to resolution.

It’s not just a more efficient way to work; it reinforces the company’s values.

A long-term relationship, built to scale

Since joining Help Scout in 2016, The New Wheel’s use of the platform has grown right alongside their business. What began as a way to manage customer conversations has expanded into something much broader: a shared space for handling every kind of meaningful interaction. Today, Help Scout powers so much more than just their sales and service support.

“We use Help Scout for more than just our customer interactions. We also use it for accounting, purchasing management, and warranty management. It allows us to have a centralized inbox that everyone can collaborate on.”

They now manage four inboxes across teams and locations, run two Beacons on their site, and maintain a rich Docs knowledge base for self-service. AI Answers handles common questions instantly, while workflow automations help their team stay organized and responsive. Despite that growing toolkit, the heart of their support remains the same: personal, thoughtful, human conversations.

Real support from real people

The New Wheel’s mission has always been about more than bikes. It’s about building a better model for care for customers, for employees, and for the community they serve.

With Help Scout, they’ve created a support system that feels just as thoughtful as the service they deliver in person. Even as they embrace tools like AI, the focus remains exactly where it started: on people.

“Help Scout helps us deliver the kind of support we’ve always wanted to give. It’s part of what makes The New Wheel…The New Wheel.”