We asked Ridestore about their work and how they manage their remote team with Papyrs.
Who are Ridestore?
Ridestore is a fast-growing company in snow e-commerce. We were founded a decade ago by two brothers passionate about snow.
In the beginning, we were selling very different kinds of sportswear products, but for a few years, we are focusing on snow wears. On our website, you can find a lot of different brands, such as Adidas, Nike, Burton, etc. We also created our own brands: DopeSnow and Montec, to be able to propose the best products to our community.
Those brands were created in collaboration with our customers. Our philosophy is 100% focused on the customer; we designed our company like this. Unlike many companies, the most critical department at Ridestore is the customer experience one. They are working with customers every day, to understand their wishes, receive the lousy feedback (yes, sometimes ;). We don't want to be an old brand who only think about selling products without trying to understand the customers. So, of course, it's slower than a classic strategy, but it's a perennial one. You can read more about our philosophy on our company blog inside.ridestore.com.
Before using Papyrs, what were you trying to do that was hard to accomplish, and who did it affect. What business challenges did you want to resolve?
When we first tried out Papyrs, we were looking for a tool to create an intranet for our team. We wanted something comfortable and practical since it was going to be used by our work team but also newly recruited members. All in all, we needed a tool that would allow us to be creative, but at the same time would offer a readily built frame so that we wouldn’t have to create too much new content. The second point is the more crucial one.
Our customer experience team is 100% remote, which means that each crew member is working in a different place (most of the time in the EU, but we also have people outside). Different places mean different hours, different availabilities and so on. This is the main issue we wanted to resolve, improve the productivity of our "rookies". Before Papyrs, they sometimes had to wait a few hours to receive an answer about "how to do something?". Now, they just have to check our intranet.
Before Papyrs, we tried a lot of different ways to create something similar, but we didn't find something as powerful. The main benefit of Papyrs is that it's super easy to manage. Everybody is able to submit content easily (I mean, if you know how to use any social media, you can understand how it's working super fast), you don't need any training to be able to answer to a post, create a post, etc.
— David Voge, Content Marketing Leader, Ridestore
How you are using Papyrs. Any specific functionality of Papyrs you find especially useful?
We mainly create pages with different themes in a Q&A kind of format, each page gives you the answer to a specific question. The search function was vital for us, so [not having] that was a real deal breaker. The primary function Papyrs has for us is that it’s a learning tool for the newly recruited. Our Papyrs is like a bible, containing everything you need to know to start working in our team. The idea is that if you are uncertain about something, you can consult the intranet by typing a search word and then receive the answer then and there.
What has changed for Ridestore by using Papyrs. What results and benefits have you enjoyed using the product?
It has helped us to become more efficient and more uniform. This way everyone gets the same information in the same format, every time. It was an excellent way to remind our "old" employees how we should do a simple task. Most of our team are working remotely, which allows for a lot of method variations depending on your online connections, so it's easy to follow a wrong routine. Papyrs on the other hand reduced the training time for new people in the team a lot, and allows us to be less focused on their work (even if they still need more attention than other employees :). Before Papyrs, we always needed to have someone available to answer to questions; now, the new crew member only has to check our Intranet. Most of the time, the answer is available and provides him/her a step by step guide on "how to do something."