Test Rides and Meetings
A test ride, a demo, a shop visit: any time one advocate and one prospect agree to meet, you can put it on the conversation. Stoked texts both people, reminds them, asks afterwards whether it happened, and keeps every meeting in one list.
Stoked names these after your own event type. If your community has one private event type called “Test Ride”, the menus and pages say Test Ride and Test Rides. With several private types, or none, they say Meeting and Meetings. This article uses “test ride” throughout.
Test rides are part of Community Events. Contact support to turn it on for your community.
Schedule a Test Ride
Test rides are scheduled from the conversation between the advocate and the prospect. Advocates can do this themselves from their side of the conversation; you can do it for them.
- Open the conversation.
- Open the ⋯ menu above the messages and choose Schedule Test Ride.
- Pick the event type, the start time and the place. Find a place fills in the address for you. The end time comes from the event type’s default length.
- Add any Details the prospect should know, such as what to bring.
- Click Schedule Test Ride.
A card appears on the conversation timeline with the time, the place and the details. The prospect and the advocate both see it.
Times on the form are in the advocate’s time zone, or your browser’s if the advocate has none on file. An advocate can’t schedule a test ride in the past, but you can, to log one that already took place.
Change or cancel one
Open the ⋯ menu again and choose Edit Test Ride (Oct 10). The menu lists each test ride that has no outcome yet, up to 30 days after its date. From there you can change the time, place or details, or choose Cancel Test Ride.
Advocates can edit and cancel the test rides they scheduled. You can edit and cancel any of them. Once an outcome is recorded, a test ride can no longer be edited.
What People Are Texted
| When | Prospect | Advocate |
|---|---|---|
| It’s scheduled | The date and time, the place, the details, and the waiver link if one still needs signing | The same notice, only if an admin scheduled it |
| The time changes | The new date and time, and the place | The same notice, only if an admin changed it |
| The place changes | That there’s a new location, and where | The same notice, only if an admin changed it |
| It’s cancelled | That it was cancelled | The same notice, only if an admin cancelled it |
| 24 hours before | A reminder with the date, time and place | The same reminder |
| 1 hour before | A reminder with the time and place | The same reminder |
| 2 hours after it ends | Nothing | “Did your Test Ride with Sarah happen?” with a link to answer |
A few rules apply to all of these:
- Nobody is texted about their own change. An advocate who schedules or moves a test ride doesn’t get a notice about it; the prospect does.
- Editing only the details texts nobody.
- Nothing is sent about a test ride that has already started. Logging or tidying up a past one is silent.
- The prospect is only texted if they can be. They need a verified phone number, must not have opted out of texts, and must not be blocked from the conversation.
- Replies come back to the conversation. Each text to the prospect ends with “Reply to this text to reach” and the advocate’s name.
- The follow-up waits for morning. If a test ride ends late in the evening, the “did it happen?” text is held until your community’s active hours. Reminders are always sent on time.
Every one of these texts shows up in your Message Log.
Recording What Happened
Two hours after a test ride ends, the advocate is texted a link that asks whether it happened. The same question appears on the test ride’s card in the conversation. There are three answers:
- Happened: the two of them met.
- No-show: the prospect didn’t turn up.
- Called off: it didn’t go ahead for another reason.
If the event type has a reward, answering Happened creates a reward claim for the advocate. It arrives in your Inbox to approve like any other claim.
Record or correct it yourself
You don’t have to wait for the advocate. Once a test ride has started, its card on the conversation timeline in the admin portal shows Happened, No-show and Called off. Click one to record it.
If an outcome is already recorded, open Change on the card to correct it. Changing an outcome to Happened creates the reward claim if there wasn’t one. Changing it away from Happened leaves any existing claim in your inbox for you to decline.
The List of Test Rides
Go to Events in the sidebar, then Test Rides at the top of the page. (Public events next to it is the list of events anyone can find on your community site.)
Each row shows when the test ride is, its type, the advocate, the prospect, the city, whether the waiver is signed, and its status. Times are shown in your own time zone. Click a row to open the conversation, where you can record or correct the outcome.
Statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Upcoming | It hasn’t finished yet |
| Awaiting outcome | It’s over and nobody has said whether it happened |
| Happened | The two of them met |
| No-show | The prospect didn’t turn up |
| Called off | It didn’t go ahead |
| Cancelled | It was cancelled before it took place |
Filters
- Show chooses which test rides are listed. The list opens on Upcoming, soonest first. Awaiting outcome is your to-do list: test rides that are over with no answer. Past is everything that has finished or already has an outcome and wasn’t cancelled. A test ride that is under way stays under Upcoming until it ends. Cancelled and All do what they say. Everything except Upcoming is listed newest first. The numbers next to Upcoming and Awaiting outcome tell you how many there are.
- Outcome narrows the list to Happened, No-show or Called off. Only past test rides have an outcome, so picking one from Upcoming, Awaiting outcome or Cancelled switches the list to Past.
- Type appears when your community has more than one private event type.
- One advocate. Click the small filter icon next to an advocate’s name to see only their test rides. Click the blue Advocate tag above the list to go back to everyone.
Export to a spreadsheet
Export CSV downloads the test rides that match your current filters, all pages of them. Each row has the test ride’s ID, the start and end time, the event type, the status, the advocate and prospect, the full address, the details, whether the waiver is signed, whether an advocate or an admin scheduled it, when the outcome was recorded, and when the test ride was cancelled and whether an advocate or an admin cancelled it.
To get a list of no-shows, set Outcome to No-show and click Export CSV.
Event Type Settings
What a test ride does is set on its event type, under Settings → Event Types:
- Waiver. Choose a waiver and the prospect is sent the signing link in the text they get when the test ride is scheduled, unless they have already signed it in that conversation. The list shows Signed or Not signed for each test ride. See Waivers.
- Reward. Choose a reward and a claim is created for the advocate when the outcome is Happened.
- Default length (minutes). Sets the end time of each new test ride. The “did it happen?” text goes out two hours after that.
- Default for conversation events. The type that is already selected when someone schedules from a conversation.
Pay a reward once per conversation
A conversation can have more than one test ride, for example when the first is rescheduled as a new one or the prospect comes back for a second visit. If you want to pay the advocate once for each prospect rather than once for each visit, limit the reward. Open the reward under Activity Definitions and set Per-Advocate Limit to a maximum of 1 claim per Conversation. We recommend this for test ride rewards.
Related: Conversation Beats · Waivers · Message Log